There are 52 Republican Senators. Five are POSSIBLE “no” votes. 47 are almost sure “yes” votes.
Can the MSM start redefining the term “Conservative”? You’ve done a tremendous job on redefining “Democrat” “Liberal” and “Progressive.”
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Heller, Collins, and Paul. Out of the three, the shakiest is Paul. In any event, keep calling.
(Why in G-d’s name is Gardner in favor of this? Stupidity or nihilism?)
@littlegirlblue Capito/WV has much the same makeup, yet she seems to be leaning ‘yes’.
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No, she hasn’t. She hasn’t said she’d vote for or against something and then voted the opposite direction. She’s waffled and pretended to be on the fence, but I’m unaware of a time she said one way or the other and then went back on it.
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I just remembered that this CBO score was developed, in part, by the Senate gang of 13 working with the CBO as BCRA was being developed. For my part, I am looking at this score as an ‘optimized’ score. That is, I’m almost certain the current score represents a close to best case scenario in terms of effects on Medicaid and numbers of folks being thrown off insurance.
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I don’t think we know that. Some of these senators have been eerily quiet on the subject.
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Yeah, I’m tending to believe her too. But…if we also take the other No’s seriously and add in the Medicaid Directors’ letter which implies “Lawsuit!”, ACA replacement probably can’t be done via reconciliation. What does that leave? I think, but I might be wrong, it means that Rs would need to work with Ds to get a bipartisan bill. Or, forgo the whole ACA repeal thing.
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Looking at her photo makes me believe she was the “man hands” model on the infamous Seinfeld episode.
The herd of stray cats. I’d imagine none of them were impressed by Toomey lying his ass off yesterday - can’t do that in an election year when 15,000,000 have lost their insurance.
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Capito has a constituency of coal miners who get some aid with black lung disease in the ACA’s current form. Maybe they’re so hard core Repub they’ll forget they’re dying.
@sniffit courtesy of fossilhead. Courtesy of obrien1984. Tell me again I’m overreacting.
Looking at her photo makes me believe she was the “man hands” model on the infamous Seinfeld episode.
Silver lining is We can call her Cavewoman Collins if she flips.
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Are there other Republican Senators who could cast decisive “no” votes besides Rand Paul, Susan Collins, Dean Heller, Murkowski, Lee?
Murkowski, Capito, Cassidy, Gardner, Lee, Cruz, Johnson - roughly in that order. But if the dam breaks, it’ll be a massive flood of "No"s.
@lestatdelc McConnell can’t give passes to Collins, Murkowski, and Heller. And if Paul and Lee remain opposed he’s screwed. But then, maybe he wanted it to happen like that.
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Glad she didn’t cave, but she had the McConnell “free pass”, as will Murkowski.
They will still more than likely cram this through via reconciliation with a 50 vote and a Pence tie-breaker.
The Democrats have to be ready to kill this via having 40k+ amendments ready to go to run-out the clock not he reconciliation process (which rules state that an unlimited number of amendments are allowed).
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Three’s enough…
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The GOP could throw a little money at Maine for opioid treatment programs, call it the Collins amendment, and she could change her tune.
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How would they justify not throwing money at Ohio as well, where they’re stuffing dead bodies into trucking containers because there’s no room left at the morgue? Or at WV, which I hear is even worse…?
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You’re right, I was being VERY optimistic in my five.
It’s just that everyone is paying attention to the very few holdouts or “no” votes, as though they’re the “real” Republicans or Conservatives.
This ain’t your daddy’s Republican Party…
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My bet is Murkowski being the second “no”.
That would be the two most likely to get the “free pass”.
Then the sledding gets very tough in that I have zero confidence in the extremist GOPer like Paul, Cruz, et al would actually kill the “Obamacare repeal” process dead.
And even though Collins makes it sound like she is a firm no, I have almost no confidence she is a solid one.
Lying. Yesterday Toomey claimed that this bill makes permanent the Medicaid expansion.
@pluckyinky And the argument will be we need to defeat enough Dems in ‘18 to have the votes to repeal the ACA. But that will work about as well as Dems’ '14 argument that only by re-electing them will the ACA get fixed.
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I think it’s the latter. I think that going forward they’ll claim they tried to repeal and replace but Democrats blocked them. They’ll say Democrats will soon be begging them to work with them once O’care “implodes” completely. But it’s probably dead until after the midterms.
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That might work, but then they’d have to throw money at all the other states with opioid addiction including all the states on this map, and the title of the bill would then not fit on one page.
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