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Emerging from their first conference meeting since the setback, Republican members said the message from their leadership was direct: it's time to unify.

"I think it was the longest prayer we've ever had," New York Republican Rep. Chris Collins said, referring to the opening prayer that is part of every conference.

Many members emerging from the Tuesday morning meeting said the GOP wasn't yet ready to abandon health care despite the fact that President Donald Trump made it clear last week it was time to get on to tax reform.

To that point, the White House has quietly re-engaged on health care in recent days, despite the very public proclamation last week, according to two people familiar with the process.

The efforts, while unclear how effective or deep they may be, have been driven by chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who believe there is a way to bridge the gap that helped collapse the effort, the sources said.

The paralyzing issues for the conference remain unchanged, however. Significant shifts toward the conservative House Freedom Caucus would only serve to drive even more moderate members away from the bill. Move the bill back toward the center and the Freedom Caucus will buck the effort as a bloc. The bigger issue may be the President himself, who made clear his patience had run out on the issue and was champing at the bit to move onto tax reform.

North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson said if Republicans could find the votes, the House could again bring up last week's bill as early as this week, noting that the House Freedom Caucus was "probably feeling a lot of heat."

Asked about the White House posture, Hudson told reporters, "I think if we called the President today and said, 'We've got the votes,' I think he'd be back on board."

During their leadership news conference Tuesday morning, Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana said that Democrats' celebration Friday had been "premature."

"To my Democrat colleagues who were celebrating Friday's action, I think their celebration is premature because I think we're closer today to repealing Obamacare than we've ever been before, and are surely even closer than we were Friday," Scalise said.

House Speaker Paul Ryan also said Republicans would continue to push for repeal and replace.

"I won't tell you the timeline because we want to get it right," Ryan said, adding that members had a "very constructive meeting" where some who had pledged to defeat the bill last week appeared open to working with the rest of the conference to find a solution.

Ryan specifically advocated that the health care bill was still the best path to defund Planned Parenthood, a key conservative agenda item. The Wisconsin Republican said the health care bill was a better option for defunding the organization than including the provision in the upcoming must-pass spending bill.

"We think reconciliation is the tool because that gets it in law," Ryan said. "Reconciliation is the way to go."

Rep. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said the message from Ryan was "this issue is not going away."

Iowa Rep Steve King told reporters that the discussion at Tuesday morning's meeting reminded him of an impasse that House Republicans faced in 2014 on a border security bill. "we circled back together and we resolved the issue. I think that mood exists today." He added, "the minds that have been in the starkest disagreement are now going to put their heads together."

Members of the hard-right wing of the conference seemed committed to not move on from health care. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows told reporters that he and others still wanted to get to "yes."

Meadows told reporters after the extended closed door meeting, "everybody wants to find a way to get this passed and we're going to work real hard to do that."

"We're going to get a yes. We're going get to yes. It will be a better bill. And I think everyone is going to be very happy in the end," said Virginia Rep. David Brat, a member of the Freedom Caucus.

Meadows told reporters after the extended closed door meeting "everybody wants to find a way to get this passed and we're going to work real hard to do that."

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, a Republican from Georgia, said every House Republican who went to open mic during the GOP conference meeting pushed to get health care done.

"It's halftime," he said. "The game isn't over and it's not starting over again. We're just coming back out after halftime and we still have the ball and we're going on the field."

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Republicans not yet ready to abandon health care - CNN

The humiliating failure to repeal Obamacare reveals the GOP is not a national governing partyand Trump is a failure as president.

House Speaker Paul Ryan at a news conference after Republicans pull the American Health Care Act bill on March 24, 2017. (Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)

When the history of the fledgling, fumbling Trump presidency is written, the past week will go down as either the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end. Trumps disastrous week began with FBI director James Comey confirming that his campaign is under investigation for possible coordination with Russian officials to sabotage Hillary Clintons presidential candidacy. It ended with the ominous slam of a door Friday night: House Speaker Paul Ryan pulling the monstrous American Health Care Act because he didnt have the votes to pass it, admitting that the GOPs seven-year crusade to repeal the Affordable Care Act is over.

A president who campaigned on the promise that were going to win so much, youre gonna be sick of winning has suffered a disabling string of losses in his first two months. He had to fire his National Security Advisor, Mike Flynn, for lying about conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak; Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also discovered dissembling about his Russian ties, had to recuse himself from Comeys investigation into Trump campaign coordination with Russia. Federal judges have repeatedly blocked his Muslim ban. But nothing has been as publicly humiliating as the betrayal of a core campaign promise: That Trump and Republicans would immediately, in his words, repeal and replace the nightmare of Obamacare. Influential conservative writer Philip Klein called Trump and Ryans move to pull the bill from consideration the biggest broken promise in political history.

Although it only lasted 17 legislative days a ridiculous timeframe for a major health system overhaul it was enough time to show that Trump is an incompetent poseur, hardly the master negotiator he claims to be, and that Paul Ryan is a shallow opportunist who pretends to be a policy wonk and sharp political leader, butis neither.

The bill was a tax cut for the rich disguised as healthcare reform, financed heavily by cruel cuts to Medicare. Most people would have paid more in premiums, and the plan would have insured 24 million fewer Americans over 10 years. As Ive written before, it couldnt have hurt Trumps voter base older white working class red-state residents more had it been expressly designed to do so.

Clearly an unprecedented progressive mobilization played a huge role in the bills failure. Republican lawmakers reported receiving thousands of phone calls on the AHCA, all but a handful against it. That stiffened the spines of House Democrats; by staying completely united, Democrats exposed the deep fissures in the GOP.

Folks on the right and left want to give the center-right Tuesday group so-called GOP moderates who are in fact conventional conservatives; the rest of their party has moved far to the rightcredit or blame for the bills defeat. They deserve little credit. Sure, they blocked the horrendous bill, but only after years of empowering the Freedom Caucus as well as Speaker Ryan, letting their party turn into a roadblock to democracy. They voted for ACA repeal again and again, encouraging the fantasy that Republicans had a unified approach to gutting Obamacare. But they did not.

The stakes are higher now than ever. Get The Nation in your inbox.

That they did not is remarkable, but not surprising. The Republican Party is too fractured to agree on a federal approach to healthcare reform. So-called moderates at least see a role for the government in providing healthcare, using mostly market solutions. The Freedom Caucus wants to take a hammer to government programs, including the ACA, believing the market can and will provide. For six years, the GOP caucus was united in saying no to Obama, but never tried to get to yes. As Harold Pollack writes in Politico: There was a conspicuous smallness to this AHCA effort, a puzzling shoddiness given the human and political stakes. For all their endless warnings about how Obamas signature health law was hurting American families, driving up costs and putting us on the path toward socialism, it turns out they didnt care enough to put in the work.

Indeed, the bill was an abomination, a Frankenstein monster stitched together in secrecy by Paul Ryan and his minions. But Republicans are likely to fail again when they approach tax reform and infrastructure. Which forces us to face: The modern Republican Party is not a governing party. It is a collection of grievances, a noisy minority of the country held together by anger, frustration, anti-government ire, and for some, a bonding epoxy of racism. The Freedom Caucus, which came in during the anti-Obama Tea Party wave, represents a permanent resistance movement; they are guerrillas, subversives; they dont want to be part of government, they want to blow it up. Many of them, and their voters, marinated in Obama-hatred for eight years and party leaders coddled them. The fateful decision by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as former Speaker John Boehner, to block everything Obama did for two terms kept the party free of the messy job of governing. Now that they control the House, the Senate, and the White House, they have no clue how to govern.

Democrats should not help them. Americans need to see how the modern GOPs solution-free, grievance fueled anti-Obama politics gave rise to Trump andhow dangerous Trump and his party is to the country.

Read more from the original source:
The Republican Party Is Catastrophically Broken - The Nation.

Forbes

Republican Health Care Fiasco Forbes Republicans failed to repeal and replace ObamaCare for four reasons. First, there was never agreement about what the party was for and what it was against even after 7 years and 60 repeal votes in Congress. Second, the Republican leadership did ... Hospitals shares surge as market absorbs Republican health bill failureReuters Tax reform could be a back door for another Republican Obamacare repeal attemptMarketWatch Understanding The Republican Health Care DebacleHuffington Post Los Angeles Times -NOLA.com -NPR all 1,831 news articles »

Read more here:
Republican Health Care Fiasco - Forbes

New York Times

Republican Party, Russia, Tar Heels: Your Monday Briefing - The ... New York Times Speaker Paul Ryan said at a news conference shortly after the health care bill was pulled that Republicans were not yet prepared to be a governing party. and more »

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Republican Party, Russia, Tar Heels: Your Monday Briefing - The ... - New York Times

Delaware Sen. Chris Coons said he doubts Neil Gorsuch will get the necessary 60 votes in the Senate to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, and that he is bracing for Republicans to go for the so-called nuclear option to push the Trump administrations pick through without any support from Democrats.

I think this is tragic, Coons said on MSNBCs Morning Joe about the nuclear option that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he may employ to get Gorsuch on the bench. And on talking to friends on both sides of the aisle, weve got a lot of senators concerned about where were headed. Theres Republicans still very mad at us over the 2013 change to the filibuster rule, were mad at them for shutting down the government, theyre mad at us for Gorsuch, and were not headed in a good direction.

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Gorsuch, who enjoys widespread support from Republican lawmakers, is expected to come up short, as he needs eight Democratic lawmakers to support him in a confirmation vote unless Republicans pursue the nuclear option that would allow Gorsuch to be approved by a simple majority. The Supreme Court pick, who was grilled by Democrats last week during four days of hearings, is unpopular among Democrats who think he is far too conservative for the bench. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer has repeatedly signaled that Democrats will vigorously oppose Gorsuchs confirmation.

Coons said Democratic lawmakers are still bitter about obstruction from Republican lawmakers last year to prevent the confirmation of former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland.

Gorsuch got what Garland didnt, which was a fair hearing, Coons said. He got a full four days of hearings last week. I questioned him vigorously, some would say aggressively. And he is a charming man, hes got a good rsum, hes got strong qualifications in terms of his education, his service on the court, but he would be in some measures the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court.

McConnell has vowed to confirm Gorsuch before the April 8 recess, even if the nominee does not receive the 60 votes.

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Sen. Coons: Republican nuclear option to confirm Gorsuch is 'tragic' - Politico