US President Donald Trump will be seen as weakened after healthcare bill pulled, writes Jennifer Rubin from The Washington Post.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan avoided total humiliation in wriggling out of the president's order to take what he knew would be a losing vote on the American Health Care Act. That he had to go, whip list in hand, to the White House, tells us how far he has been reduced in stature by this process.
In refusing to take a vote that apparently would not even have been close, Ryan at least avoided unnecessarily putting his own members at risk (e.g., moderates who were asked to take unpopular votes, conservatives who would disappoint the hard-edged Heritage Action and other groups working against the bill). He also retained a smidgen of his own stature. Had he gone forward he would have effectively forfeited Congress's standing as a coequal branch of government.
Ryan will remain speaker because no one else wants the job, but in a sense he does not "lead" the House Republicans, let alone the House. He is continuously caught in the crossfire between the moderates and the far right, just as his predecessor was. He will have his hands full keeping the House together in the future on controversial, "hard" votes. The lesson members learned was to look after their own interests. Calling Ryan and Trump's bluff worked well for them.
