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The Art of the Deal didn't work.

The Trump White House tried simply commanding the intransigent conservatives on healthcare. The conservatives didn't follow orders. Trump tried heckling the resisters on Twitter, but that just alienated them. Trump repeatedly, though indirectly, threatened to work against the re-election of no votes. This hardened opposition. And in the end, as White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said on Sunday, Trump just expected "loyalty" from these members of Congress, a baffling idea.

House Speaker Paul Ryan may have been even clumsier in his attempts to build a majority in the House. He crafted the bill behind closed doors with nearly no consultation. He told the rank-and-file there would be no negotiation, calling it a "binary choice" between voting for his bill or keeping Obamacare. Both Ryan and Trump tried the "take-it-or-leave-it" tactic, claiming they would simply walk away from reform if their bill didn't pass.

None of this worked. Nobody should have thought it would work, because Republican leaders haven't figured out any way to run Congress, not since the Bush years.

"Since I became speaker," Ryan said Tuesday, "I have talked about the need to go from being an opposition party to being a proposition party and a governing party. It may take a little bit more time, but we are certainly listening and we're going to get there." It will take both time and innovation on the part of leadership.

Some Establishment Republicans say the entire problem is unprecedented stubbornness from the likes of the House Freedom Caucus. That's a partial explanation that misses the root causes.

Here's the basic problem:

Republican leaders haven't figured out how to lead in the Tea Party era. The two most relevant changes since the Bush era are: (1) The social media-driven decentralization of information and money and (2) the death of earmarks.

Earmarks were the easiest way for leaders to win votes and influence conservatives. If a member is undecided on a bill, just promise him $11 million for a new athletic center in his district, and bam, he's on board.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"We had a great day with the president," Paul said. "We talked about a little bit of healthcare."

04/02/17 5:29 PM

But after the Tea Party, conservatives fought to end the practice of earmarks, which had proven itself to be fertile for corruption. Indeed, the Jack Abramoff scandal and the Duke Cunningham scandal were both made possible by earmarks.

So after the 2010 elections, the Republican House and Senate caucuses passed party rules banning earmarks. That coincided with the dawn of the Tea Party era, when many Republicans had beaten establishment-backed Republicans in primaries before winning the general election. Suddenly, controlling a majority became much harder.

That's the lesser of the handicaps John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell have experienced. The worse problem is that they lost their monopolies on the dissemination of information and fundraising.

Consider the question of whether the American Health Care Act counted as "repealing Obamacare." Ryan stated that with the bill, Republicans were "Keeping Our Promise to Repeal ObamaCare." Donald Trump spoke the same way. Ryan, being the speaker, had the megaphones of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Fox News, and CNN to declare that his bill was an Obamacare repeal. Once upon a time, that would have been enough to establish his bill as a repeal of Obamacare. Any member who had campaigned on repealing Obamacare would have felt overwhelming pressure to vote for the bill.

But party leadership can no longer control the message. Through Twitter, Facebook and conservative media came the argument that AHCA wasn't really a repeal of Obamacare because it didn't repeal Obamacare. It left in place the most substantial and costly regulations of that 2010 law. Meanwhile, conservative groups like Heritage Action and the Club for Growth were able to bombard the grassroots with emails and tweets opposing the law, and explaining that it didn't fully repeal Obamacare.

Also from the Washington Examiner

"It is ironic that all of the real evidence of real money and real influence-buying relates to Democrats."

04/02/17 5:24 PM

A bigger deal than the end of the information monopoly is the end of the money monopoly. It used to be that the only place for Republican members to get big injections of campaign cash was by hosting fundraisers with lobbyists their corporate clients who could cut $10,000 checks from a company's political action committee.

Lobbyists formed a symbiotic relationship with committee chairmen and party leaders. Rank-and-file members had to be in the good graces of their chairman or the Speaker and the majority leader if they wanted one of these fundraisers. You couldn't buck leadership without your cash drying up.

No more. Citizens United and Internet fundraising have decentralized campaign cash. If you piss off the party leadership, you can turn to a national network of grassroots ideological donors to fund your re-election. In this fight, it was crystal clear: While the Chamber of Commerce backed the AHCA, the billionaire Koch brothers and the Club for Growth opposed it.

The result: Any Republican who disliked the bill and feared losing the Chamber's fundraising support could simply turn elsewhere for financial support. The Koch network specifically promised to help anyone who voted "no."

Absent the fundraising monopoly, the information monopoly, and earmarks, it will take new methods to lead the GOP. Cajoling, trolling and declaring "take it or leave it," didn't work.

Maybe next time whether it's tax reform or Obamacare again Ryan and Trump will try different methods, such as deliberate, participatory consensus building. There's no guarantee that that would work, but it can't do any worse.

Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted at tcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.

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Republicans haven't learned how to govern in Tea Party era - Washington Examiner