Analysis: President Trump preps for war with own base

[Jimbo101]

ABC News

We’ve seen him play the bully before. But how does the bully pulpit work, against his own base?

That question now defines the stakes for the Trump presidency. President Trump’s decision to march into the battle over health care alongside House GOP leaders – with no clear path to a bill-signing ceremony – places Republican leadership in an uncomfortable alliance with the White House where their own rank-and-file members are the current enemy.

The response to the American Health Care Act has been immediate and fierce. The AARP, the American Medical Association, the House Freedom Caucus, GOP Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth, tea party groups and the Koch network, even the Trump-friendly Breitbart News – all have lined against the president’s replacement plan for Obamacare.

On one level, this puts the fate of the biggest-ticket item on the GOP agenda squarely where Trump wants it: in his own hands, and at his own fingers for tweeting. He has battled, and defeated, Republicans before, with bigger consequences even than the fight over Obamacare.

“We’re going to have a full-court press,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said today.

Yet beyond the ironies of Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s teaming up to push a bill that still has no cost estimate, or a calculation about how many people will be affected, the president is embarking on a mission that is starting by testing the allegiance of his base.

In the Senate, where Republicans have even less margin for defections, the bill is running into staunch conservative opposition. Any movement in the direction of Paul and Cruz, moreover, risks alienating moderates, including those most worried about keeping their seats in future elections.

[Hortensis]

1. "Lined against" as in various armies on the field,

all determined to win. Well, he likes to be the center of drama.

[Kaleva]

2. Much like Custer

[virtualobserver]

3. His Republican opposition has collapsed with a whimper over and over again

He is having dinner tonight with a man who called him a pathological liar.

I will believe that they will resist him when I see it.