In a Hole, President Trump Keeps Digging

Does President Donald Trump really think it's a good idea to tweet bold threats at lawmakers whose votes he is trying to woo?

Or is picking Twitter fights just his sneaky way to avoid having to actually read the legislation that he wants them to vote for?

How else do we explain his erratic way of winning friends and alienating people as he pursues support for an Obamacare replacement?

You might think that a new president, burdened by disastrous approval ratings and facing multiple legislative battles, would try to avoid unnecessary spats, especially with members of his own party. But Trump? When he's in a hole, he keeps on digging.

The Trump train seemed to stop dead on its tracks when the conservative and libertarian hardliners who make up the House Freedom Caucus helped to scuttle Speaker Paul Ryan's bill to repeal and replace President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Trump, a master at the art of blame shifting, immediately blamed Democrats for the setback, even though their support had not been sought. He even singled out House and Senate Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer as "losers" because Obamacare was about to "explode," he said, and Democrats would get the blame.

History says different. When disaster strikes, people tend to blame whoever happens to be in power.

In that spirit, congressional Democrats seemed quite content to sit back and follow Napoleon's maxim: Never interfere with the enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.

Yet by Monday, whether he was moved by a change of heart or a short attention span, President Trump was back to saying that he wanted to work with the Dems. On Wednesday he even singled out Schumer ("Chuck!") in a jolly shout-out from the stage at a bipartisan dinner with senators at the White House Wednesday.

But a Trumpian Twitter storm the next day signaled the return of Trump the grump. Beginning in the morning, Trump aimed bitter threats not only at Democrats but also at the 35 or so hardline conservatives who comprise the House Freedom Caucus.

"The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast," Trump tweeted Thursday morning. "We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018!"

Does Trump really plan to enlist challengers in next year's Republican primaries to incumbent lawmakers in his own party who don't think he's conservative enough? History shows that tactic to be a loser, even for people with considerably more political experience than Trump and Bannon.

In 1938, for example, President Franklin D. Roosevelt waged a similar intervention in several Democratic primary elections to purge the party of conservative incumbents who opposed parts of Roosevelt's New Deal. The effort backfired. Almost all of those whom FDR targeted the most handily won in a humiliating repudiation by state parties of this intrusion into their affairs by the national party.

A similar Trump intrusion in state races faces a similar repudiation. Almost all of the Freedom Caucus members, according to the Washington Post, won last fall by larger margins of the vote than Trump received in their districts.

That helps to explain why the Grand Old Party's conservative wing didn't sound too intimidated by Trump's threats. Breaking slightly with Ronald Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment" -- Thou shalt not criticize a fellow Republican -- Rep. Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, responded to Trump's tweet with one of his own. "It didn't take long for the swamp to drain @realDonaldTrump," Amash tweeted. "No shame, Mr. President. Almost everyone succumbs to the D.C. Establishment."

Amash later told reporters that Trump's tactic would be "constructive in fifth grade. It may allow a child to get his way, but that's not how our government works." Ouch!

In short, Trump is finding that the barnstorming and arm-twisting tactics that took him to the White House can quickly backfire, now that he is the top dog in the Washington political establishment that he ran against.

With his approval ratings and legislative momentum in a deep hole, Trump needs to stop digging and start dealing with people who know how Washington works better than he does. Even if he doesn't stop tweeting, he needs to stop digging.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)