Peggy Noonan: Trump should ally with Dems on healthcare

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan says President Trump should team with Democrats on a bipartisan plan for replacing ObamaCare.

Newman’s column comes as the House GOP leadership’s bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare, which Trump backs, faces opposition within his own party, both from conservatives and moderates.

“The president should confound expectations, pivot, and turn to Democrats for a bipartisan deal,” Noonan wrote Friday. “No doubt Democrats would clean up the program along more liberal lines than Republicans, which would please their progressive base. But it would also please many in Mr. Trump’s base.”

{mosads}“It might help on future bipartisan efforts, such as infrastructure spending. And he can make it up to Republicans with conservative regulatory and tax reforms.”

Democrats have so far shown no interest in helping Trump repeal one of the signature policy accomplishments of former President Obama.

Still, Noonan added that Trump is not bound by the rigid ideological constraints facing many politicians, including GOP lawmakers in Congress.

“It would be no scandal if the president threw in with Democrats and moderate Republicans at the expense of Republican leadership,” she said. “He’s always been philosophically unreliable, his commitments ever-changeable.”

“His supporters would forgive a failed attempt to replace ObamaCare along Republican lines. But they wouldn’t forgive a bad bill that succeeds.”

Noonan, who was the primary speech writer for President Reagan, added that “a bipartisan deal on healthcare would also be a boost to national morale.”

Trump said Wednesday lawmakers “welcome the healthcare debate and its negotiation” while discussing a controversial bill from GOP House leaders for repealing and replacing ObamaCare.

“We’re going to arbitrate, we’re going to all get together,” he said during a rally in Nashville. “We’re going to get something done.”

Trump has endorsed the bill, known as the American Health Care Act, but the legislation’s future remains uncertain amid interparty debate over its contents.

Republican leaders cannot afford more than 21 defections in the House over the bill or two defections in the Senate, assuming that all Democrats oppose it.

The Hill’s Whip List currently has 15 House Republicans opposing the legislation before a full vote in their chamber that’s expected within weeks.

Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) have rejected the bill’s current version, meaning changes are likely needed before it reaches the Senate.