At times, divides among Republicans are as sharp as their disagreements with Democrats, as Americans have witnessed watching GOP attempts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Doing so has proved so difficult in large part because both Donald Trump and Republican leaders in Congress were long unwilling to level with the public about the tradeoffs that must be made to reshape the health-care system.

They promised a costless improvement on Obamacare.

Trump’s inconsistent rhetoric on health care and his preferences on infrastructure spending sometimes seem to align with Democrats more strongly than with those of Republicans—and little surprise, given his previous incarnations as a registered Democrat, his donations to Democrats, and the praise he once lavished on the Clintons. But Democratic legislators will have a hard time compromising with Trump even on matters where their beliefs overlap, given how fully he has alienated the party’s base with the charge that Obama is a secret Kenyan, the claim that Mexico is sending us rapists, and the boast that famous men are able to grab women by their genitals without asking.