Milbank: Trump foes find an ally: Republican incompetence

By midday, Republicans called a caucus meeting to undo the proposed changes, but not before House leaders were emasculated. House Speaker Paul Ryan, though he opposed the rules change, had just issued a statement defending it. And House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in a painful Q&A with reporters, explained how he had been thwarted by his own backbenchers.

“Why were you not able to stop it?” asked Erica Werner of the Associated Press. “Doesn’t that suggest that you’re very weak leaders of the conference?”

McCarthy, at the end of a long conference table, looked stunned. “Man! Welcome back!” he replied.

He likened managing the House GOP to his domestic life in California. “At my house, I got my wife and my two kids, and I usually don’t win what we watch on TV,” he reasoned. The difference is that here in Washington, McCarthy and Ryan have 239 children.

And if this fractious bunch can’t agree without a brouhaha on the routine matter of a rules package, wait until they get to tough stuff, such as replacing Obamacare and funding the government.

Those worried that President-elect Trump and congressional Republicans are about to enact a sweeping agenda may have an unexpected ally: legislative incompetence.

What comes next?

Take Obamacare. For six years, Republicans have talked of replacing it, and dozens of times they voted to repeal it. But now they’re in no hurry. At Tuesday’s session, McCarthy said repeatedly that Republicans hadn’t yet decided what to do about Obamacare. “We’re being sworn in today,” he pleaded.

What are some possible alternatives? “No decision has been made yet. There’s nothing right out there.”

Would the GOP alternative cover as many as Obamacare? “There’s a lot of areas that you want to look at.”

When will repeal happen? “I only do week by week.”

How would they avoid upsetting insurance markets? “Nothing has been decided yet.”

First they had to solve a problem of their own creation: The plan to defang the independent Office of Congressional Ethics and put it underneath the deadlocked House Ethics Committee.

McCarthy offered a halfhearted defense of the proposed changes, even while making clear that he opposed them. He kept misstating the proposal and, when corrected by reporters, said he would need to “sit down after and walk through it” or get “a legal opinion on how the wording goes.” Excuses accumulated: “That’s part of the whip’s job …wasn’t here … I was in the district … I’m late for a meeting.”

“You can’t even explain it clearly and you’re expecting the House to vote on it?” a reporter asked. McCarthy was philosophical. “Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,” he said.

And sometimes you spin out on the first lap.

Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group. Email: dana.milbank@washpost.com.