House GOP Leadership to Go After Its Far-Right Members with Robocalls

Across the country, the American Health Care Act, aka TrumpCare, has faced criticism for the way it will strip 24 million people of health insurance, fleece the elderly with inflated premiums, and give tax breaks to—you guessed it—millionaires. But in the dark corners of the House “Freedom Caucus,” populated by the far-right tea party fringe of the already pretty far-right Republican party, TrumpCare is bad because it doesn’t go far enough in repealing the ACA. Presumably, the fact that it doesn’t immediately boot all poor people off insurance and sentence them to life in a coal mine makes it “Obamacare-lite.” The changes they want are as yet a mystery—though further gutting of Medicaid is rumored to play a part—and will be presented on Friday, but Rep. Mark Meadows says he has enough Freedom Caucus votes to block the bill in conjunction with dissenting Democrats.

Faced with this threat, Trump and Paul Ryan have made sounds about being open to changes. Yet at the same time, the American Action Network—an arm of House GOP leadership—has begun a “”pressure campaign targeting the Freedom Caucus members who have dared to go against the new legislation. More than 1 million robocalls in 30 districts will encourage constituents to contact representatives like Meadows, Jim Jordan (R-OH), and other hold-outs to urge them to support TrumpCare.

Per Politico:

“Please contact your Congressman … and tell him to join you in supporting President Trump and Speaker Ryan’s plan to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the American Health Care Act,” the call script reads.

The robocalls describe the GOP plan — the American Health Care Act — as a conservative proposal that would “put patients and doctors in charge of health care instead of Washington bureaucrats.” Freedom Caucus members have called the plan inadequate to fully repeal Obamacare.

Smart money says they work together to find a way to screw a bunch of people in a way that makes them all happy, but who knows? Maybe this is the start of entrenched in-fighting on the right. Something has to keep them interested in the total absence of opposition from the left.