Welcome to the program. Im Jeff Greenfield filling in for charlie rose. Tonight a look at the growing divide within the Republican Party over healthcare. The first big legislative task on the Trump Administrations agenda. And whether the divide posts a long term threat to the republicans and the president. We talked to Bret Stephens of the wall street journal and had bill clinton passed welfare reform before he moved on to Health Reform its quite possible you wpbt have had the republican revolution of 1994 if george w. Bush tried doing something about the woes of middle class folks troubled by their gen Rule Health Insurance before massing a big task cut the bush years would have been different too. Trump has an opportunity to get this right by cutting ryan loose. We look at march madness the ncaa basketball tournament and a larger conversation about the ncaa. John feinstein, joe nocera and william rhoden. Whether its football or basketball does not care. If you go to a Football Game and you start to ask people about the exploitation of athletes, theyll laugh at you. If you go to an ncaa game theyll laugh at you. Theres a segment of this society that has come to view this as a problem. Im among those people, something wrong is happening here in the way theyre treated both this terms of financial he can ploitation and academic exploitation. But most people dont care. Politics and march madness when we continue. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Good evening, im Jeff Greenfield filling in for charlie rose. Donald trump was not exactly the consensus choice of the Republican Party, roughly one in five gop senators refused to endorse him. So did four of the last republican president ial nominees. But with his election and with the Party Controlling both houses of congress, republicans of almost all stripes saw a chance to finally enact some of their most significant goals from tax cuts to the environment to regulation. Now the first big test, repealing replacing obamacare has set something of a wall of opposition within republican ranks, the House Freedom caucus and the others on the right say this is obamacarelike. Republican governors and senators say the plans changes in medicaid leave those without protection. Some of trumps supporters appear to be urging trump to break with House Speaker paul ryan and forge his own path. So how big a threat is the healthcare fight to the long term hopes of the party and the president. Joining me are two journalists on the right, Bret StephensForeign Affairs columnist and deputy Editorial Page Editor at the wall street journal and rya salam executive editor of national view, im pleased to welcome you both to the table. Lets start with you, ryan. This cant be what the whitehouse and the Republican Leadership had hoped to find when they put the healthcare bill out. Well the truth is that this isnt really President Trumps healthcare proposal, this is a proposal thats been knocking around thats been evolving over a long period of time in the mind of House Speaker paul ryan and it reflects paul ryans priorities. And the Trump Administration has decided to put its muscle behind this legislative proposal. Its not obvious that thats a very sensible thing of the Trump Administration to be doing. And the problem for ryan and his allies is that the goals that republicans have articulated on healthcare are really pretty contradictory and irreconcilable. They both have to solve a political problem of not completely unraveling this new Healthcare System thats been created in this country over the past few years. On the other hand they want to deliver Smaller Government to their most ardent ideologic supporters. And thats a very tough circle to square. And the Trump Administration, the truth is that i dont think the president thought all that deeply about these questions. What he did do, how he differentiated himself when he ran for the republican nomination was by presenting himself as a defender of the safety net. Low and bow hold he found that Many Republican primary voters responded rather strongly to that message. And thats going to be a big problem for him. So you have this i dont know fits a paradox but you have this odd situation where the people who most want an unalloyed appeal people in the House Freedom caucus. They seem to be the ones who are most urging trump to break with speaker ryan even though trumps instincts seem to be toward as you say preserving the safety net. Far from a free market system. This plan comes from two very seemingly directions. It comes from people styling themselves as ideologic purists who also funny enough in many cases represent rural sees and it also comes from republican senators in particular who represent more diverse swing constituencies. So you both have opposition from what you might describe the left of the party and the right of the party and yet the kind of base for both of those are quite similar. Look, this is the problem. You have a congress that, whether on one side or the other among the republicans, in the process of making what amounts to ideological calculations. Does the ryan bill go far enough or not. I think the president is making a political calculation which is does he want this Republican Party on his arm or not. To him, the Congressional Republicans are like a girlfriend who might or might not be interesting to him, maybe thats too colorful. Its a late night show. In other words, for trump, he used the republicans in this iteration of the Republican Party basically disposable. And thats what i dont think the republicans in congress or really the Republican Base that got behind donald trump ever really understood. He would be somewhat, reminds me actually in his own way ironically of arnold thats what i dont think the republicans understand. You said something that resonates bret when you talked how hes treating republicans as disposable. I think theres another way of looking at it. For a lot of republican primary voters they feel as though tradition al republicans were treating them as disposable and donald trump came along and actually spoke to them, spoke up for their interests and pledged to defend them. I think thats a big problem because paul ryan has an imperative thats an intra republican imperative. How does he divide the constituencies, and satisfy their zeal did a focus group with 35 trump voters. They are staying with him but they are very angry with the Republican Congress, you know. They thought that trump had gotten their votes in part because he was not one of them. So the question is when you move from that kind of political arena to the legislative process, how does trump satisfy his voters who heard a positive message and get anything through congress. The thing is if we find out in the next week or so that this bill is not going to make its way through congress, that it doesnt lack the support. Trump is simply going to turn on the republicans on ryan, and you already see rumbling of this through his Media Operations or associate Media Operations to say this is the point i was making at the getgo. You cant trust these republicans because trump of course was never a member of the, never an actual republican, never part of the party identify logically. Barely a part of the party in terms of his formal party affiliation. I dont think it would necessarily hurt trump with his movement because the republican, to switch metaphors the horse he was riding on his way to the presidency. A vehicle convenience, once your horse is exhausted and collapses under you, you get on another horse. The trump base that relates to his anger, his nativism, the emotional appeal that he projects to a certain type of voter is thought going to abandon him so easily. The people who are going to find themselves disappointed are those Movement Conservatives who made a bargain with the devil thinking trump is a guy we can control, we can inform. He is the jar into which we will pour the sweet wine of paul ryans agenda. Didnt quite work out that way. Jeff, if i may. Think back to george w. Bush, reelected in 2004 in large part because in the state of ohio he managed to win the vote of large numbers of lower middle income folks many of them women. He did surprisingly with African American voters in that state. He won them over because george w. Bush to them seemed like somebody who was going to defend americas interest, and look out for people like them. Working for middle class voters in these states. Then shortly after he was inaugurated, what did he press forward with. Social security reform at a time by the way when the benefit pensions were going away. When a lot of people are anxious about wage stagnation and else and also a vast guest worker program. Not to mention that he was going to spread democracy around the world. So that was his program. Despite having won on the strength again of these working and middle income voters. So for donald trump right now to abandon ryancare, whatever the con servives wants is abandon thing. For trump to abandon this now would in my view be a very astute reading of actual flush and blood Republican Voters. But then you have this other little, i dont know if its an 800 pound gorilla or elephant. If you want to repeal obamacare this is all you have. Frankly it sort of remind me of a story. Guys in a bull fight sees a vunder hot meat pies, ten pesos. Its doughy and no meat. The vendor says no hot meat pie, thats the name of the pie. Are we at a point the republicans are so desperate to say we repealed obamacare that theyre going to argue dont even worry about whats in it, if we dont repeal obamacare were going to disappoint all the people who have been waiting eight years for this. Look, thats a perfectly fair point. If they dont get this bill through, then this Republican Congress is a failure. You are just, you are setting up a democratic majority or super majority in 2018 just as surely as the failure of hillarycare back in 1993 set up the republicans for the Newt Gingrich ascendancy a year later. I think that may be the kind of thought that at the bottom is going to win over both Freedom Caucus types and you know waiverring moderates to say well we have to get behind this or else there wont be a Republican Party. Theres not going to be a tax cutting agenda or any part of the republican, the platform that they want to enact, this presidency will be dead or i should say this congress will be dead on arrival. Kind of a bizarre fantasy of republicans and what they want. Rand corrosion conducted a study of primary Republican Voters and he found something thats going to shock you, jeff. They found that 51 of republican primary voters favored increasing taxes on people who you were more than 200,000. If you look at the universal republicans that number would be higher because let me ask you something. Why in the healthcare bill are the tax credits skewed so dramatically toward the more affluent. Thank you very much, jeff, well done. You got right on to this. So in this legislation if you had a bit more revenue, the hard thing in obamacare would actually get this revenue, right. Again you might want to have tax cuts down the line. You might want to have bigger middle class tax cuts. Thats what republicans would enthusiastically support but where was the grassroots furor for cutting taxes, for people earning millions and millions of dollars. If youre looking at cuts in taxes on Investment Income but that is really the chief accomplishment of ryancare relative to all the other disruption and harm it may well cause. That sends a bad central. Were going to have a tax reform that will focus on the economy, corporate taxes that male week america more attractive destination for investments. That would have been a first great thing too but instead you have ryan acting as though theres some kind of time limit on obamacare. This is not the debt limit. This is not something thats going to blow up in your face if we dont do this right now. Getting the sequence right matters a lot in politics. Had bill clinton passed welfare reform before he moved on to Health Reform its quite possible that you wouldnt have had the republican revolution of 1994. If george w. Bush tried doing something about the woes of middle class folks troubled by vulnerable Health Insurance before passing a big tax cut the politics on of the bush years would have been different too. Trump could get this right by cutting ryan loose. Part of the problem h re is that the republicans are fact sizing they have an opportunity comparable to the one obama had in 2009. The difference is eight seats in the senate. Thats a significant difference in that obama had just, and just if you remember the obamacare debate, just enough Political Capital in those two years from 09 to 010, to just push through something as big as obamacare. The real lesson, the presidency that succeed do it by taking small steps and winning every time rather than trying to reverse something as large as this as your first order of business. Let me put this on the table for both of you. Lets say that President Trump comes to the realization that do you know what, i won with a message that was essentially populist. Half of my inaugural speech could have been given by bernie sanders. So ive been misled by the Republican Leadership. Im going to refashion or im going to have my people refashion the healthcare bill thats align what im going to do with taxes that really is devoted to the middle class. As i said in the campaign im not really interested in helping those who already have so much. Is that a plausible political road for him to take. Yes, it is because ive always thought, and this is one of the reasons im a never trumper is that actually donald trump ideologically would be more comfortable in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party. His emphasis on social protection, his belief in infrastructure spending. All of these align at least with classic, the classic democratic economic agenda. He defined about a year ago before the election he was asked what the future of the Republican Party would be in five or ten years time. And he actually gave to my surprise a really coherent answer he said i see the Republican Party as a workers party. Not a party of plutocrats. Whether they want protection from immigrants or illegal immigration. They want protection from what they see as a muslim horde thats invading us. They want a corporate state of a kind we have exampled from frankly juan perons argentina. This is came up under ronald reagan. It always seemed donald trump was a Third Party Candidate and the only way a Third Party Candidate could win the whitehouse was to take one of two parties and both parties are hollowed out in terms of institutional forces that could prevented that, that he did it. In that case if donald trump tried to redefine the Republican Party along populist lines how does that work given who the leadership is in the house and the senate. Mitch mcconnel is populist, paul ryan is populist in the sense of changing the tax laws. That seems to me a pretty hard road. When youre thinking about the two parties, one way to think about them is purely through an ideologic lens. And another way to think about them is what is the coalition that parties represented. One way to think about it is that over the last 20 or so years the Democratic Party has evolved into more what you call a bar bell party. Its a party that represents large numbers of working class people, particularly working class people of color and it also represents a larger number of upper educated and rich folks as well. Barack obama out performed mitt romney earning more than 250,000 a year. That was since 1964. Thats a pattern thats likely to keep persisting. The Republican Party is the party that represents the broad american middle. Right now its largely the white middle but it represents part of the country that are more egalitarian and less cosmopolitan and parts of the country that have been hard hit by social integration in various ways. To me that is a place, that should prompt republican politicians to think about how do i better represent the interests of this constituency. Of course there are i