Lindsay Graham is touting a new ‘block grant’ approach to repealing and replacing Obamacare. Was this the quid pro quo that Trump got in return for a troop surge in Anghanistan?
Breitbart published an exclusive yesterday explaining in gory detail the plan to repeal and replace Obamacare being shopped by Senator Lindsay Graham (Uniparty-SC).
The plan itself, in outline form, is a vast improvement over Obamacare. And, while this is a net good, it is the bigger picture I’m more interested in.
Just before recess John McCain (MIC-AZ) dramatically voted down the latest attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare. An act that was absolutely a slap in the face to President Trump.
Graham’s plan, which likely can get the backing of a majority in the Senate according to him, creates a Federalized ‘block grant’ structure that will distribute collected taxes and allow each state to implement a health care system that they want. And the Federal Government will, supposedly, stay out of the way.
I’ll believe that when I see the actual bill. But, taking Graham at his word what this means is that the whole repeal vote was nothing more than a set up, because in no way could they have put this together in the last few weeks.
Therefore, this was held back from Trump and the rest of Congress for the purpose of finalizing a number of foreign policy initiatives that Trump was hostile to, namely expanded sanctions on Russia and Iran and a troop surge in Afghanistan.
Remember, Graham said after Trump’s Afghanistan speech (cribbed almost verbatim from previous speeches made by National Security Advisor Gen. H. R. McMaster) that he was finally proud of his President.
“I’m proud, I’m relieved. I’m proud of the fact that President Trump made a national security decision, not a political decision. I’m proud of the fact that he listened to the generals and most proud of the fact that he shows the will to stand up to radical Islam. I’m relieved that he did not take the advice to withdraw which would’ve been disastrous, or create a mercenary army. So I’m very pleased, very thoughtful, very inspiring speech, and I can assure you, a lot of people in Congress will be behind the president,” Graham told Fox News.
Graham, like McCain, never met a foreign war for ideological reasons he didn’t like. So, this was ultimately the price the Neocons extracted from Trump for potentially getting one of his campaign promises through.
This sets the GOP up for also pushing through a disaster relief bill for Houston, dealing with the debt ceiling and positions them for a rout of the Democrats in the 2018 mid-terms.
All this does is reinforce the idea that the President is allowed just enough authority to play at the edges of changing things domestically while, as Russian President trenchantly told Oliver Stone, the foreign policy never changes.
This leads to:
- More sanctions on everyone, because Trump likes protectionist measures.
- More threatening people for bad behavior, because Trump thinks of himself as a moralist.
- More chaos in Central Asia, because Trump sees China as the main competitor.
Obamacare is a lightning rod issue, however, domestically. And that’s what he needs to ride into the mid-term primary season with.
Nothing good comes from this from a foreign policy perspective. Trump is too much of a hothead to not be manipulated into responding to false flags. The North Korean missile launch on Monday was so out of left field that I’m having a hard time reconciling it in anything other than false flag terms.
I’m not saying it was a false flag, but I am saying that it makes the most sense as a false flag given where we are. If the reports are true that Trump and his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are at odds on the value of diplomacy and the military wants to push Trump further, a false flag to goad him into firing Tillerson and replacing him with a pliable idiot like Nikki Haley then makes a lot of sense.
They say politics is the art of the possible. It’s more the art of the reprehensible and the devious. If the Graham bill sails through Congress after all of the debt ceiling posturing in late October, and there’s a confrontation with North Korea in the next couple of weeks, then remember this post folks.