Why Republicans once staunchly opposed to Trump’s bill changed their minds

William Brangham:

So, for more on how Republicans, even those who were staunchly opposed to this bill, have since come around, as well as how voters see it, we are joined again by Sarah Longwell. She's a Republican strategist and publisher of The Bulwark.

Sarah, it's so nice to have you back on the program. Help us understand this. How did some of these GOP members who were once committed die-hard no's suddenly get to yes?

Sarah Longwell, Publisher, The Bulwark:

It's actually very simple. Donald Trump demanded it, and they all fell in line.

And it is actually a little bit stunning, because they were such firm no's when it came to the Senate version of this bill. And for some of the fiscal hawks, they were no's because it added somewhere between $4.1 trillion and $6 trillion to the debt. And then for the moderates, for some of those legislators, there was a real concern about the cuts to Medicaid.

And so a lot of those legislators had said, absolutely not, we will not vote for this bill. And then Trump and J.D. Vance simply went to work on them, calling them and cajoling them and browbeating them. And there was a lot of peer pressure.

And I think it's really become one of the pieces of orthodoxy now and the Republican Party even transcends the commitment to tax cuts is the commitment to doing whatever Donald Trump says you have got to do.

William Brangham:

You recently wrote about Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, saying she was one of those no's. She then fought for certain things to be changed that would help Alaska. And then she got to yes.

You wrote that her actions seem to epitomize this political moment that we are in right now. How so?

Sarah Longwell:

Well, there's a lot of forces that Donald Trump has unleashed on the country. One of them is sort of, I get mine and whatever happens to everybody else, well, they can sort of go pound sand.

That is how Donald Trump operates. And that's a bit what Lisa Murkowski did by getting a carve-out for Alaska on some of the pieces of the bill that she saw as the most harmful to people. And she was very clear that this was a bad bill and that it was going to do damage to a lot of people. It was going to take away SNAP benefits and Medicaid coverage to a lot of people who needed it.

And she basically fought to have her state exempt from those cuts. And in the horse-trading to get her on board, Alaska was spared some of the more deleterious elements of the bill. It was also just sort of the quintessential cowardice that you see in the Trump era from Republicans. They're afraid of Trump voters. They are — have sort of a "go along to get along" mentality when it comes to their colleagues, right?

They don't want to sort of — it's almost like cafeteria-style pressure, right? They don't want their colleagues to be mad at them. But she certainly had the power to stop it and chose not to.

William Brangham:

I want to drill into those — that issue about Medicaid that you mentioned, which is that President Trump said Republicans are not going to touch Medicaid.

And you saw some Republican senators like Josh Hawley really raise considerable critique of that bill over Medicaid. And yet he too got on board. How do you explain that?

Sarah Longwell:

While Donald Trump and Republicans have promised two very key things, one was that they would not touch Medicaid, the other was a promise of fiscal discipline and not adding trillions of dollars to the debt, ultimately, in order to get this bill passed, they simply decided to forego both those promises.

And they did it because there was no other way to sort of pay for this and get it done. And I think, ultimately — and this is another reason this bill I think is bad on its merits — is that they just wanted to pass something. This is the only piece of legislation that Republicans have put forward. They have got nothing else on the agenda. They have had nothing else.

Congress has done almost nothing. They're trying to get it done with this one shot. I mean, even when Obamacare was being debated, it was — we had months and months of debate so people could try to learn what was in the bill. People are going to be finding out what was in this bill for years to come.

William Brangham:

Do you think voters, in the end, when they do find out the details of this bill, will punish Republicans for this?

Sarah Longwell:

I do. I mean, this to me seems sort of like politics 101 for the Democrats.

First of all, Democrats, one of their better issues in terms of where they get trust from the voters is on health care. And this is a pretty straightforward argument. It's Donald Trump gave tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and he paid for it by cutting health care for the poorest Americans.

And I think, if you throw in there the lack of fiscal discipline and the blowing up of the federal debt and deficit, that's a potent message for 2026. The other notable thing is that the people who make up Republican voters now are much more often low-income voters than they used to be.

I mean, back in 2009, about 26 out of 100 congressional districts that Republicans won were among the lowest-income. Today, it is 56 of the lowest-income districts are — voted for the Republican. And so Americans are going to see the effects of this bill in certain areas pretty quickly. And I guess they will decide if they like it when they do.

William Brangham:

All right, that is Sarah Longwell, Republican strategist and publisher of The Bulwark. Always great to talk to you.

Thank you.

Sarah Longwell:

Thanks so much.