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This is always framed as a swipe at Trump, but it really shows how incompetent the establishment GOP is. They have hundreds, if not thousands, of people working for think tanks, policy assistants, lobbyists, etc who were supposed to be crafting a Republican alternative to Obamacare. They had multiple votes to repeal Obamacare before Trump was a political player.
It turns out they had no plan. Apparently they were just cashing paycheques and playing Candy Crush.
John McCain repeatedly voted to repeal Obamacare, campaigned in 2016 on repealing Obamacare, then cast the deciding vote to save Obamacare. He was hailed as a hero by the press for opposing Trump, but he knew that there was no plan to replace Obamacare for all of those votes and during his campaign.
Trump just assumed someone in GOP healthcare policy had done their job in the past six years.
Legislation is the job of the legislative branch. The President should have input, but he shouldn't be expected to go into more depth than broad strokes about ideas he supports and opposes.
In part it's because obamacare is more or less a globally center-right healthcare policy- it's cribbed from a bunch of euro systems that are very establishment-conservative coded.
It happens to be a giant trainwreck compared to those systems, and that's mostly the democrat's fault, but it's not like there's a right-coded twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk as to how to make it better. There just isn't a conservative-coded way to meaningfully bring health insurance costs down, although you can do some pruning around the edges. There are progressive-coded ways that would get implemented by right wing technocrats not facing a lot of scrutiny, but that is not a good description of the Trump admin.
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Yup, absolutely. This is part of the dynamic TW is pointing at in his OP - the actual policy experts are overwhelmingly Democrats. On top of that, Republicans don't reward actual expertise - no one thanks you for being the guy saying "wait, it doesn't work like that". Trump himself is ultimate form of this pathology, but it didn't start with him and it won't end when he's gone.
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Alternative view is that you’re mistaking ad copy for content. The “debates” and public appearances and speeches given to the pubic are vague on purpose. They are not meant to inform. The point is to give out nice sounding platitudes that the base hopefully claps for and that can be quote mined for advertising purposes. Saying something too specific about what your plan is will make some of the base oppose it and that doesn’t help. If you propose cutting the Department of Transportation, people who think we need it won’t vote for you. If you just vaguely wave at cutting something, everyone assumes that their programs are safe and you don’t lose votes.
I think in practice this vagueness functions the opposite way. If you said you wanted to cut program XYZ then the people in that program know you're coming for them, but people in other programs feels safe. That which is not explicitly included is implicitly excluded and all that. On the other hand if you leave the details vague you leave people uncertain about whether their program is safe. I think in the presence of that uncertainty people are more likely to infer the negative outcome (you want to cut their program) than the positive outcome (their program is safe). By leaving the details vague you can piss off everyone instead of just the people in a particular program.
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