Discussion: A Delay Won't Solve The Senate GOP's Deep Divide On Health Care

If your going to adopt that abrasive know it all style you better get some original material and a better handle on the facts. These threads aren’t about scoring a victory over other commenters. Nor are they served well with hackneyed crap like “Bush crime family” and trite leftie bunk. There’s a subject to this thread and it ain’t you guy.

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It’s just another laughter-filled day at the office for Beej.

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On the other hand, the folks who make millions drafting and directing this legislation seem to have come up short. To be sure, the fixers may well be more dangerous and certainly more cunning, but there’s a limit to what they can do if party members are calling for more transparency and declining to rubber-stamp any old thing.

If this were the House, I’d agree with you completely, but Senators generally can’t alienate all the smart voters in their states. A few votes might not be the revenge of the pendulum we want to see, but they’re significant with margins like these. And at this point, I’d say that any significant vote that doesn’t split squarely along party lines has broader significance and promise. I am definitely holding my breath.

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Republican governors are at last doing God’s work.

One of the most critical differences between Senators and governors is that most of the latter actually have to manage a real government and make administrative decisions that affect people in the near term.

Senators don’t have that immediate responsibility, and the worst of them do nothing more than pontificate and flap their gums.

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Question is whether throwing a bone to the “moderates” (there ain’t no moderates left in the GOP, but some Senators play one on TV) will be enough to flip their votes in the Senate. The hard right guys are much better at following orders from the Kochs, they will kvetch but vote for it anyway.

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The chances of the AHCA passing after the July 4th break are presently less than 50%. Senate GOP holdouts are beginning to make rational political calculations, which is a good thing for America. The Trump inspired irrational confidence of the GOP finally ebbed a little this week.

What could bring the zombie bill back? A big investment from the Koch Bros on a meaner version of the bill. The problem: much like the agenda they tried to sell in the GOP primaries, it’s profoundly unpopular.

We also can’t understate the role of Schumer in holding the Dems together, attacking the GOP relentlessly, and offering olive branches to find a bill to improve the ACA. Schumer may also be solving the Democrats’ Bernie Sanders problem. He seems to be working Bernie over to support Medicare buy-in, lowering the eligibility requirement and public option. (Yes, this was HRC’s plan). But Schumer is selling it and Bernie, given his legal troubles, might be ready to accept the lifeline. A unified Democratic Party ACA 2.0 reform plan will be a big winner at the ballot box.

What I am also interested in is the impact of all of this on Trump. I’ve said since early May that I see him on a path to resignation. I think the Koch Bros saw it for the first time this past week. If I were the Koch Bros, I’d push Trump out by the end of the summer, no pardons, and let Pence take the helm for a full year before 2018. I expect that the GOP will be more forthcoming in upcoming hearings, with the exception of areas that deal with campaign finance.

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Agreed, but it’s also bad business for a Senator to get on the bad side of his governor esp. if they’re of the same party and esp. if that governor is popular and has staying power. Take Dean Heller of Nevada, who as the article points out has a tough race coming up. Gov. Brian Sandoval, moderate Republican, is quite popular with voters and wonks alike. His pet policies look nothing like BHCA. Heller may be acting out of self-interest, maybe his conscience is acting up, who really cares. He’s doing the right thing and he’s making it look like it might be the smart thing to do, too.

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Actually, while I don’t disagree with your assessment of Trump’s ineffectiveness, I think goes deeper.

The GOP was a fractured party before Trump ran. Hell, its part of the reason he won the nomination. The GOP would have had these same problems, in both the House and the Senate, that they are currently having, regardless of who was President. Namely, that the right wing firebrands…aka the House Freedom Caucus with Cruz and Lee…and Paul dancing around on the edges, carry over-sized influence…and they know it.

This is the GOP eating its own, and its been happening in Congress for some time now. This current fight is just another iteration of that, and was bound to play out. And there will be many more in the future. Trump merely escalated the tensions in that fight (quite significantly with a $1,00,000 ad buy targeting one of your own party’s most vulnerable Senators, and his “negotiating” skill that have so pissed off republican legislators, they actually lose votes after he makes calls).

Think of it as declaring no rules internecine fighting. But the internecine fighting had already begun.

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More than anything, this whole process stands as a monument to GOP leadership’s belief that they can continue to hoodwink their own supporters without ever paying a price. Sadly, they’re probably right. If Dems can’t capitalize on this in 2018 they should all pack up and go home.

The House loses would be enormous. They lose all the Trump voters instantly, and that’s a substantial part of their electorate. Losses up and down the board as those voters don’t show up, or worse, vote to get all those a-hole republicans out of office for hurting their beloved.

That’s part of the deal they have struck. They can’t openly move against him, without suffering even worse losses in '18 than they are already facing.

I still think the most likely scenario is in the spring of '19, after the Dems take back the House. I think between Nov, '18 and then, impeachment will be discussed among republican Senators. And yes, the hearings and investigations will intensify.

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http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/06/mcconnell-trump-attacks-are-beyond-stupid/

Who is “they?”

I disagree with the premise of this article, and with many similar analyses that imagine a fracture in the GOP between “moderates” and the “hard right.” First of all, the whole GOP is pretty crazy hard right right now, we have to remember. Otherwise, we’re normalizing the transformation of a democratic (small d) party, that debates about policy issues from a policy / ideology perspective, into what the GOP is, which is a power structure built around loyal apparatchiks.

But set that aside. The problem with imagining what’s going on now as reflecting irreconcilable ideological differences is that we know how routinely these rocky divides become a gentle mist and disappear, allowing the GOP to move forward lock step. It’s not just that ‘moderates always cave’. It’s that the GOP has no ideological positions that trump authority. Just look at the rise of Trump, from ‘never Trump’ to ‘always Trump, treason and corruption be damned.’ Does anyone serious think that Cruz, Lee, and even Rand are so bought in on ideology that they can’t be bought off? Does anyone think that Collins is an actual, versus strategic and hypocritical, moderate? No, this is not about ideology. It may be about the political survival calculations of a few senators in a few states, but to be honest I even doubt that. I think this is about the overall GOP positioning of this plan. They are happy to have a few people head fake and tut-tut, and when the time comes the gates of Mordor will open all the same. There are no real hills left to die on for GOP believers. They’ve surrendered every one. Now it’s all about fancy dancing until the final horn is sounded.

What this means is that tea leaf reading about what’s going on behind the DC Kremlin’s walls, or trying to appeal to Collins to save us, are at best marginal efforts. All that matters now is building a truly democratic party that can work politically, most likely within the Democrats, but if not there, somewhere else.

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From the establishment GOP & tea party GOP point of view, they’re losing enthusiasm and energy because of the inability to get anything done in DC. If they can’t get the AHCA passed, then they’ll have worse negatives with Trump and no upside. If Pence is in, there’s some upside potential to refresh the GOP brand and dismiss Trump as an aberration. Trumpism is dead. Trump is unpopular. If Pence takes the helm and does not issue Pardons, they might survive. If Ford had not pardoned Nixon, Ford would’ve likely won the '76 election. He started out too deep in the hole because of that pardon but came within a few thousands votes of winning.

I"LOVE" the picture you posted of one of my(?) Senators.

he’s a pretty good legislative tactician.

according to MoJo, but maybe not so much.

NYT headline says something different.

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I’m glad you used the words “at least” because it’s not just the ones who’ve been vocal about their objections and their reasons for doing so. There are others who are quietly in the background whistling away, hoping no one notices them yet are just as opposed to this bill as those who’ve gone on record. Portman and Gardner and probably Flake are opposed as well. There are probably ten or more Republicans opposed to this bill for various reasons. For most of them, throwing money at their state isn’t going to be enough.

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In the mean time, the time to be mean is when Trump starves the existing ACA subsidies as a way to extort Democrats to make a deal to get the votes. That’s been his stated strategy. He’s making hostages of the people in states with Democratic Senators. He thinks this will work.

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And then what? There’s no “Republic on the Move!” to be seen here and there simply isn’t time to establish such a movement by then. It worries me that anything less than a resounding and vindicating victory in 2018 might cause liberals to pack it in and leave the country to the hounds. That’s sort of how we got here, isn’t it?

The GOP promised to repeal ACA without having a plan to replace it, which was ridiculous. It would be yet more ridiculous for voters of conscience to disengage or wrench the works without having a well-laid plan to restore a center or center-left politic. I think we can all agree that Sanders isn’t going to save anybody, so who will bear the banner? The most active liberal groups today are too far left, too informal and too touchy-feely to be really viable in the near future.

But it’s never actually been tested. Most of the so-called moderates in the Senate have never served in the majority under a Republican president where whatever they vote FOR would become law. Voting against something under a Democratic president won’t cost you much back home, neither will voting for something that stands no chance of becoming law. They’re in a totally different situation now that really doesn’t compare. I think Josh is brilliant and usually pretty spot on. I just disagree with him here.

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