OPINION:
President Donald Trump’s tough-talking, America-first messaging has won him much in the way of accolades from conservatives in the nation who were both sickened and tired by the all-talk, all-apology manner of governing characteristic of the Barack Obama administration.
But in his recent attacks on certain members of his own Republican Party, Trump’s taken his beloved boldness and gone amok.
To put it simply, you can’t be condemning the Freedom Caucus, Mr. President. It makes you look like a mad scientist chasing after his escaped test subject, beaker of fluid in hand — “Drink it! Drink it!”
OK, maybe not that bad. But bad enough.
“The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don’t get on the team, & fast,” Trump tweeted. “We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!”
Say what? Fight the Freedom Caucus — same as fighting any old down-in-the-dirt Democrat? Bite your tongue, Mr. President. And I mean that as a friendly chastisement.
Back in 2014, Sen. Mitch McConnell made national headlines by taking on the tea party movement that was still sweeping through politics — the one that had put a target on his own Kentucky back — and vowing, with shocking candor, to “crush” them.
His widely reported words back then: “I think we are going to crush them everywhere. I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country.”
It was a statement like few others that defined the line between establishment Republican and grassroots conservative — between entrenched politician and struggling U.S. patriot. And it was one that underscored just why the tea party movement came to be in the first place — to take out the elitists and bring in the constitutionalists.
Quick side note: Isn’t that kind of how Trump won?
Oh yes, one can make the case that it was the winning McConnell, not the losing tea partiers, who had had the last word. True enough, there McConnell sits, safety tucked in his now-Majority Leader office. But the anger among conservatives toward McConnell continues to seethe.
And it’s this anger that Trump’s touching when he makes statements like: Let’s get those Freedom Caucus people — those dang Freedom Caucusers and all the Democrats, too.
Grouping the Freedom Caucus with Democrats is folly. They are certainly not one and the same. Targeting the Freedom Caucus members to take a political fall is folly — these people, unlike few others on Capitol Hill, are driven by principle and setting them in some sort of White House crosshairs for election-time take-down only rallies them closer to their cause.
It herds them tighter in resolve.
The Freedom Caucus now has a new issue that orients, and it’s one that doesn’t glow brightly on the presidency because it showcases the White House as the big bully on the Hill.
And lest we forget, the country’s just gone through eight years of bullying from the White House. Heck, Obama often bragged about his Chicago-style bullying roots — if not in word, then by pen-and-cellphone congressional bypassing deed.
The Freedom Caucus won’t panic in the face of Trump attack. Why would they? They’ll appear the patriot at the gate and Trump, the new Obama bully in town.
“It’s a swamp not a hot tub,” wrote Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, in a scathing Twitter message back at Trump. “We both came here to drain it. #SwampCare polls 17%. Sad!”
And Rep. Tom Garrett of Virginia weighed in as well, tweeting to Trump, “Stockholm Syndrome?”
His Twitter taunt was meant to remind folks how Trump rode a wave of populism to the White House, vowing a people-first, politician-second type of leadership — a governing principle that ought to put him along amicable paths with the Constitution-first, constituent-close-second goals of the Freedom Caucus.
So come on, Trump. Republicans who hated you on the campaign trail spent considerable time pointing out how you weren’t a “real” conservative, warning how you would turn Democrat at the drop of a Make America Great Again hat. Why give this wing of the party a chance for smug satisfaction, at least so early in the White House game?
Quit the attacks on the Freedom Caucus. Let the House Republicans take the lead in finding an Obamacare repeal that works. And if they don’t, then it’s lawmakers’ fault — and the American voters will take action come election time. After all, they’ll remember how some of these same Republicans voted for bill after anti-Obamacare bill while Obama was president, knowing the White House wouldn’t sign.
Trump’s best bet on Obamacare right now? Set aside the bulldog. Be a diplomat. It’s the only way now to get the deal done.
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