Republican members of Congress are being swarmed at town hall meetings in their districts—when they dare take questions from the public—and the First Read crew offers one reason Republicans are struggling to answer tough questions:
You take the boisterous town hall grillings that Republican lawmakers are receiving, add it to a lack of detail on the GOP's biggest legislative priorities (Obamacare, tax reform), and you get political trouble. Big league. After all, you can't beat something with nothing. And right now, all Republican lawmakers have are outlines and goals about their legislative priorities — but nothing concrete to defend. Indeed, one of the consequences of this town hall backlash coming so soon in the Trump Era (it's Town Hall Winter, not Town Hall Summer) is that there hasn't even been time to craft legislation, let alone begin key committee hearings.
There’s a good point here—Republicans can’t answer questions because they don’t have answers for questions—but it’s way too generous to Republicans. They’ve had years to come up with a concrete plan for replacing Obamacare, but instead they just voted again and again to repeal it. They’ve had months since Election Day to come up with concrete legislation. They just haven’t done it. Not only that, there are lots of specific things Republicans could tell their constituents about their legislative plans—it’s just that those plans are so very unpopular that Republicans don’t want to stand up there and admit it publicly without a major PR operation backing them.
Not having answers for the questions voters are asking is a problem. But the main reason Republicans don’t have answers isn’t lack of time, it’s unwillingness to tell the truth about what they want to do.
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