How congressional Republicans have neutered the Trump agenda

But here again, Trump is weak. In areas where Trump broadly supports orthodox Republican policy, such as repeal of the Affordable Care Act and tax reform, congressional leaders have moved bills that show little substantive administration influence. During both the health-care and tax push, Trump announced constantly changing positions, tussled in public with various important lawmakers, and generally tended to support whatever version of each bill was currently being considered, while occasionally repudiating previous iterations. In essence, the president ceded legislative agenda-setting to Congress and simply became a cheerleader for whatever congressional Republicans came up with.

This is one reason that you shouldn’t put much stock in all those vote studies that show congressional Republicans voting with Trump at very high rates. Such studies assume the president is setting the agenda, and that congressional Republicans are choosing whether or not to support the president’s position. But with the agenda being set by congressional leaders and the administration having unusually little influence over the substance of legislation, it makes more sense to view such correlations as Trump’s adopting the Republican position.