The Republicans in Congress Who Are Opting to Self-Deport From Washington

Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican, knows a thing or two about the power of health care at the ballot box.

In 2011, he became the speaker of the State House in North Carolina after a wave of populist anger over the Affordable Care Act swept Republicans into office across the country. In 2014, he defeated the state’s incumbent Democratic senator as voters who saw the election as a referendum on government competence in the wake of the health care law’s messy rollout handed the Senate back to Republicans.

So Tillis’s refusal to back President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill could be interpreted as a clanging alarm for a party that doesn’t want to hear it.

“Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise,” Tillis said on the Senate floor on Sunday, blaming “amateurs” in the White House for encouraging Trump to back a bill that Tillis said would kick some 663,000 people off Medicaid in North Carolina alone.

Tillis had found himself squeezed between a key lesson of his career — don’t mess with voters’ health care — and President Trump’s biggest domestic priority. With Democrats eager to hold the measure’s deep Medicaid cuts against him, and Trump blasting him for wavering, Tillis decided there was only one option left: self-deportation from Washington (also known as retirement).

And he’s not the only one, as congressional Republicans reckon with the fact that even a modicum of independence from Trump can be politically untenable in their branch of government.