Rep. Charlie Dent said Monday President Trump would be best off shifting his attention to passing an infrastructure bill as he looks to recover from the GOP’s failure to deliver last week on its promise to repeal and replace Obamacare.
Mr. Dent, Pennsylvania Republican, said Mr. Trump likely learned from the setback over health care that he is better off building a bipartisan consensus than trying to appease the far-right members of the House GOP caucus.
“I would recommend they pivot to infrastructure now because that issue I think has the best opportunity to develop some sort of bipartisan coalition in the House and the Senate,” he said on CNN’s “New Day.”
The House GOP pulled its plan to scrap Obamacare last week after House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Mr. Trump failed to secure enough votes to pass the measure.
Mr. Trump has since blamed Democrats for not supporting the effort, while others have pointed toward the House Freedom Caucus, which led the Republican resistance against the plan, and refused to rally behind the bill.
Mr. Dent, who opposed the bill, said Mr. Trump and his administration “were making concessions to the hard-right elements of the conference and I knew darn well they were not going to vote for the bill anyway.”
“In that process they ended up alienating more of the center-right members,” he said.
Mr. Dent said Republicans have to get the basics of governing right if they hope to tackle big issues facing the nation.
“We have to be able to do the basic blocking and tackling of governance before we want to throw the ball down field,” he said.
“The very issues that drove John Boehner from the speaker’s job, the underlying politics dynamic still remain today and are creating problems for Paul Ryan,” Mr. Dent said. “He is doing the best he can under tough circumstances.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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