A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.
Still reeling from the collapse of the Affordable Health Care Act on Friday, conservative media outlets spent Monday wondering about the young Trump administration’s next steps. While some maintained that there was still a chance for healthcare reform, other outlets and commentators suggested alternative routes that the GOP might explore—and pointed to other promises that Trump is keeping.
In National Review, Jay Nordlinger wrote that Republicans should “take a mulligan” on health care and do everything over, this time emphasizing persuasion. An earlier article on the site gamed out a “reform and retain” alternative to “repeal and replace” that could more easily win bipartisan support—or, at least, put swing state Democrats in a difficult position.
The Federalist proposed another strategy for tackling health care in “3 Non-Stupid Strategies For Republicans To Reverse Their Obamacare Fail.” Acknowledging, “The political damage is already done,” the publication went on to argue, “Repealing the Affordable Care Act, freezing Medicaid growth, then piecemeal replacement is the best possible plan.” While this last step would require bipartisan effort and compromise, the article suggests that taking such an approach would at least prevent an electoral disaster for the right in 2018 and 2020.
Meanwhile, many publications seemed to think it was time to focus on anything but healthcare reform. Drudge Report, in particular, featured a picture of the White House and a link that simply read “New Week.”
Drudge Report
That link directed visitors to a Fox Business article titled, “Trump Keeps Focus on Promises, Meets with Business Owners at the White House.” After cryptically referring to “one campaign promise … pushed to the back burner,” that article discussed the president’s Monday morning session on “economic empowerment for women business owners,” a meeting attended by Ivanka Trump. The article framed this meeting as a promise kept.
Trump’s business background also came up in articles about the administration’s planned Office of American Innovation, to be run by Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner. The Blaze wrote that the team “was designed to shake things up, using tried-and-true business models from business executives with little-to-no political experience instead of stale government ideas to run the country.” Similarly, the Daily Caller wrote that the innovation office “is expected to help attain some of the major promises Trump made on the campaign trail.”
Appearing on Fox & Friends, Newt Gingrich offered a broader approach for how Trump should move forward, whatever issue he might be tackling. “First, you go to the country. You don’t go to the city,” he said, suggesting that Trump should be selling bills at rallies, not on Capitol Hill. He went on to say that he thinks the administration should “focus on infrastructure first, because you can reach out to every single Democrat on infrastructure. You can write a bipartisan bill that gets an enormous margin.”
Gingrich’s call for a bipartisan infrastructure plan intrigued Rush Limbaugh, who considered the prospect at length on his radio show, saying:
I think the Democrats are salivating at the opportunity to work with Trump. I think they’re licking their chops. I think privately the Democrats can’t believe the good fortune that has been dropped in their lap by what happened with this bill. … I can see the Democrats happily joining Trump to work with him on his trillion-dollar infrastructure thing.
He went on to speculate that such cooperation might be bad for leftist politicians, since it would potentially enrage the base. And yet, he warned, it might also provide one more opportunity for Democrats to attack the GOP, which is, he said, “always portrayed as being against progress.”
