It's transparently evident that the Republican opposition to the PPACA (I'm not going to call it "Obamacare") was nothing more than a focus of their irrational opposition to anything and everything that Obama tried to accomplish as President. Even before it passed, the details of the PPACA were distorted and lied about (remember "death panels"?) and no sooner was the ink from Obama's signature dry when state attorneys general and Republican lawyers started filing suits to cripple the law before it had a chance to do some good. Most, if not all, Republican lawmakers made repealing the PPACA the centerpiece of their campaigns, continuing the lies and distortions and riling up the conservative base who often did not have the slightest idea what was in the law. Candidate Trump, who knows how to work a crowd better than most politicians, made repeal (and later "replace") a central element of his campaign, but even Trump, who was so insistent that the PPACA was "a disaster", didn't really know what was in it.
But you would think that the Senators and Representatives, some of whom actually know what they're doing (slimy as they are, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell aren't stupid, and are experienced legislators) could have come up with a replacement in the seven years that they complained about how bad it was. But that was obviously not what they were spending their time doing, because when it was time to present an actual plan, the Republicans couldn't agree among themselves on what that plan should be, and they all had to agree since they locked the Democrats out of the whole process. The most ridiculous development was when the Senate leadership presented a bill, which they acknowledged was bad, and tried to sell it to their caucus by insisting that it wouldn't become law!
The whole time this was going on, the President was hectoring the Senators, including some thinly veiled threats, berating them for not getting a replacement passed. Every version of the Republican replacement bill was in stark contrast to what Trump said he wanted in a replacement bill, although Trump's vision was pretty vague: a "beautiful bill:, a "better bill", a "more affordable bill". He even called the Senate bill "mean" at one point. By the end he was reduced to tweeting that they should just repeal and start over, or just pass something, anything. So much winning.
Meanwhile, while all of this was going on, or not going on, legislatively, White House staffers were at each others' throats. Sean Spicer the press secretary quit over the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as his boss, the Communications Director, whom Chief of Staff Reince Priebus also opposed. When Scaramucci accepted the job he immediately attacked Priebus and other White House staffers. Priebus was sacked, then Scaramucci was fired, but not before he suggested that Steve Bannon was performing oral sex on himself. And let's not forget the President's feud with his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, who was with Trump from Day One. Key positions in the State Department are unfilled, which is headed by a neophyte, by the way, as are many cabinet positions. Foreign relations are being conducted by early morning tweets, which are often contradicted later in the day by Trump's appointees.
In some respects, this widespread incompetence keeps some of Trump's agenda from being enacted. That's good. But it also puts us in a precarious position on the national stage. Will nuclear weapons be launched at North Korea via an angry tweet?
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