Republican Congressman Ken Buck has declared that the GOP “is dead” , saying the U.S. has been distracted with “frivolities” and that Congress has been unable to accomplish anything substantive since President Donald Trump took office.
“The Republican Party is dead,” Buck wrote in the . “… Republicans carried a strong vision and values into unified government six months ago. We championed principles like limited government, job creation, border security and budget balancing. We promised to repeal Obamacare, enact tax reform and roll back burdensome federal regulations. But what have we done?”
The Windsor lawmaker is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, which has been a vocal proponent of pushing the GOP further to the right. But Buck’s pointed criticism of the Republican Party who are upset about .
Some top Republican lawmakers have also over the past several weeks, .
“I think there’s a great deal of frustration in the party,” said Dick Wadhams, former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party. “The brutal truth is that Republicans across the nation campaigned on repealing and replacing Obamacare. It would be hard to find a Republican candidate in the last seven years that didn’t talk about that issue and use those very words.”
But Wadhams disagrees with the premise that the GOP is dead, explaining that he thinks Obamacare will still be repealed this year and is optimistic about tax reform. “I think it’s way premature to write off the party,” he said.
Buck, , said he thinks Trump and Sessions need to work out their differences in private and voiced support for the attorney general. The congressman also raised concerns about the now-ousted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci’s handling of that tension.
“Itap not good strategy in a place like Washington, D.C., when you’re under a microscope to have a communications director making statements that are going to be parsed in different ways,” Buck said on the news network.
In his commentary,, Buck also said the spending bill passed by Congress earlier this year betrayed Republican values and that tax reform plans have yet to come to fruition.
“Immigration reform is talked about more on Fox News than it is on the House floor,” Buck wrote.
Buck is up for re-election next year in his GOP-dominant 4th Congressional District, but the former Weld County prosecutor , should current officeholder Cynthia Coffman jump into the state’s crowded governor’s race.
“What can we do?” Buck asked in his commentary. “More than anything else, we need a vision, someone who has a message and a plan to unify this country. Instead, we’ve assembled a ‘b-team’ of messengers who distract the nation with frivolities.”