McConnell Plans To Force Vote On ObamaCare Repeal, Hopes GOP Accountability Revives Replace Effort
“We’re going to find out if there’s hypocrisy in the United States Senate in the next few days”
One of my favorite things to come out of the Republican ObamaCare flailing is Kemberlee’s term for it: a cluster. It is that. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly has one card left up his sleeve, and he intends to use it next week: force his caucus to record for their constituents (and for posterity) their vote on ObamaCare repeal. (Democrats will vote, too, of course, but we know how that will go.)
I like this move. Put every single Republican on record for once and for all on ObamaCare repeal, and let us see who stands where and how that compares to the numerous repeal votes each cast when Obama was in the White House, veto pen at the ready.
This isn’t a single-play for McConnell; it’s part of one-two punch that he hopes will rally Trump supporters and others who want ObamaCare gone (or those who want to keep it.). The pressure resulting from a formal repeal ObamaCare vote will help him herd recalcitrant members behind . . . something that is less of a cluster.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is taking the rare step of forcing his members to take a tough vote on an Obamacare repeal bill, H.R. 1628 (115), that is on track to fail, making them own their votes.
Senior Senate Republicans believe the high-profile vote expected Tuesday — followed by conservative backlash over the GOP’s failure to fulfill its seven-year campaign pledge — might provoke enough heat from the base to bring senators back to the negotiating table.
Indeed, the Senate Republicans who have campaigned on, spoken for, and supported the repeal of ObamaCare will be placed in a difficult position. A position that they are already prepared to defend to their constituents by explaining that “circumstances have changed” since they voted for repeal in 2015.
Politico continues:
The decision to hold a vote — versus just pulling the bill from the floor without forcing members to go on the record — will be more difficult for some senators than others.
It could be the biggest liability for Republicans who supported a 2015 repeal bill — which Obama vetoed — and now won’t support the same measure. All Republicans currently in office besides Sen. Susan Collins of Maine supported it.
“We’re going to find out if there’s hypocrisy in the United States Senate in the next few days,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.). “I don’t believe in situational ethics. So if you thought it was a good idea to repeal when we had a president that probably would not have accepted it, what’s wrong with repealing it now when we have a president who would sign it into law?”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who is not up for reelection until 2020 in a conservative state, argued that “circumstances have changed” since she voted to repeal the law in 2015 and that she “would hope” voters understand her argument. For instance, expanded Medicaid has played a big role in combating the opioid epidemic in her state.
“People’s minds change and circumstances change,” Capito said. “And as time goes on, that’s what’s happened and you know, I gotta do what I think is the right thing to do.” She doesn’t want to vote on a repeal until she sees a replacement measure for the Affordable Care Act.
Is the change in circumstance one of the perceived growing support for government-run health insurance? Or is it something else?
The vote on repeal will tell us a great deal . . . as will McConnell’s next move.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Provided this is a *real* repeal, of course.
Given that qualification, any Senator who votes against it should be primaried. Hard.
We already found out.
Quite some time ago.
One of my senators from OH is Rob Portman. During the last campaign cycle all of his campaign ads specifically mentioned the repeal of ObamaCare. He is now in favor of keeping it. My impression at the time was that Portman’s ad campaign was text book election cycle politics; say what you must to get elected. He was fortunate that his opponent was an incompetent fool. He won’t be so lucky next time.
Please forgive the timing*, but sounds just like ‘Build the Dang Fence!’
*Despite my political opposition to Senator McCain, I wish him as full and speedy a recovery as possible.
Portman is a genuine two-face (oxymoron I know). He voted to confirm Loretta Lynch as AG and did infact campaign on Obamacare repeal, as did everything other Republican. I despise him.
Cluster —-
We will see just how many traitors there are!
For all that people keep screaming about him… I find myself really liking this new McConnell.
Especially for a Senate Majority Leader with only 52 nominal Republicans.
I look forward to seeing what he will do with a larger majority after next year’s elections.
This is the same old McConnell, but he’s only been Majority Leader since 2015. He was masterful in keeping the Democrats at bay while Obama was perched atop the WH prior to winning the Senate, though, and as I’ve often said in comments, McConnell is no fool, and he’s no coward. He’s as smart as they come. It’s just rare when his goals align with ours. Thus the confusion about his backbone and cajones; his are all cold steel through and through, he just doesn’t always want what we do, so it’s easy to miss.
People don’t appreciate that he got all Trump’s cabinet nominees thru, invoked the Nuclear Option, and got Gorsuch thru also. Most of the votes were very close, but they all passed.
Is McConnell doing the job? What if we didn’t have Sessions (well yes he screwed up on the recusal), Gorsuch, DeVos or the EPA guy? Those were all very difficult, and without them Trump would be in a much worse position to make change.
And Trump the dealmaker secured McConnell’s loyalty by hiring his wife to the Cabinet, before anyone else was thinking that far ahead. I looked at that deal and said “genius!”
None of these so-called Republicans even care what their constituents think, they only care what their big campaign donors and the Washington media talking heads tell them to do.
The only time McConnell really has shown his ‘cold steel,’ backbone and cajones is in stabbing the GOP base in the back and kicking them in the cajones.
Even boehner – the most spineless, cajones-less male to ever hold public office – showed backbone and cajones when it came to stabbing the GOP base in the back.
And who needs a backstabber ‘as smart as they come?’
Get rid of this guy.
I have to agree, Fine, that McConnell uses his great and many skills and talents for evil. 🙂 I never said he didn’t. I just said that he’s no whiny weakling quivering in a corner as too many people are too quick to cast him. He’s all grit, brains, and balls. He just doesn’t often use his powers for good. 😛
And since you brought it up, Boehner wasn’t a spineless bowl of jelly, either. You don’t get to a leadership role in ANY organization, but perhaps especially in politics, if you are a weak, useless, idiot. Boehner was nowhere near as intelligent, savvy, or capable as McConnell, but he was no weepy baby doll.
Honestly, I find the rush to underestimate people like McConnell and (to a much lesser degree) Boehner a weakness on the right. Not thinking like you do is not a weakness; being unable to tell the difference between weakness and ideological difference is a far larger handicap. One, by the way, the McConnells and even the less-able Boehners are smart enough to exploit.
My comments were not concerning any underestimating of McConnell’s abilities – just his loyalty to the base he was hired by to represent.
A member of your team’s abilities are meaningless if they are going to throw the game for a payoff.
As for boehner: as a useful idiot of corporate interests, he got where he did by interia, being reliable to be bribed by outsiders of the House, as well as insiders. Sure, he was able to survive, but he survived from a position of strength due to his corruptability, and a wildly fake dedication to conservatism.
The real test for any lawmaker is how well they do when they are in the minority. We saw both boehner and mcconnell quickly sidle up to obama and betray their base. Ryan couldn’t wait to also get on board the backstabber express.
Now that they’re in the majority (though alcoholic boehner is gone, probably drinking himself to death at some country club bar), the swamp waters have receded and they are now shown for the louses they are, despite any other positive qualities they might possess. In fact, the fact that someone like mcconnell DOES possess any other talent only makes his betrayal of the base worse. Boehner has at least some minor excuse: he was a drunk. Ryan and mcconnell have none.
I get where you are coming from, but this dramatic talk of “betrayal” just doesn’t register in any meaningful way. It whips up the already whipped up, but it does nothing else (and may even alienate people who see problems but think the hyperbole is a bit wild and off-mark.).
Just tossing ideas out there; if we don’t agree, so the heck what? I’m allowed my opinion, as you are yours. The minute that stops, we are no longer on the “right” side. In any sense of the word. 😛
Of course you have a right to your opinion.
And I stand by my characterization of many acts – and inactions -of the GOPe as betrayals, much the same as many acts of obama were acts of betrayal of his oath of office, and acts of hillary clinton were the same – and highly criminal.
Gotta call them as you see them. Given the ruthlessness and dishonesty of the left, and the intentional fecklessness of the GOPe the ‘gentleperson’ game is a losing one for America as we knew it.
“It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2017
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/23/trump-tweets-democrats-are-laughing-at-russian-witch-hunt-republicans-do-very-little-to-protect-him.html
Ain’t it? And sad for the GOPe – we’re going to decimate them.
One of the factors that killed the “repeal” last week was the how senators demanded to be paid off with pork. McConnell is operating from weakness so long as these crooks aren’t forced to go on record.
Voters may not like it when their politicians disagree with them but that is forgivable. What they are much less forgiving about are politicians saying one thing to get elected and then doing the opposite once in office. That is the hammer McConnell needs. Get these weasels out in the open.
Also, I am sure McConnell took note of the Senate Conservative Fund declaring that they will be very active in funding primary opponents if things Senate Republicans don’t get their act together soon.
And everyone in the House is already hearing it from the Tea Party. Each one is up for re-election next year. Normally, they would be counting on the Speaker’s Campaign Fund for a big chunk of their campaign funding. But with Ryan less popular in his own district than Trump and with the memory of Eric Cantor still fresh, kissing up to Ryan could be fatal.
Next year is shaping up to be an epic “throw them ALL out” election year. The primaries will be the only things that matter. The Democrats, the ones from the mothership that is, are doomed. They were defeated for good in 2016. Penniless and are growing more confused and disorganized by the day, it’s all to Trump to endorse primary challengers. Start with Paul Ryan.
“Get these weasels out in the open….”
Being one of those weasels, mcconnell will fail. And on purpose.
Lame enough to think Trump will fail, McConnell doesn’t want to anger the corrupt GOPe club where he is still a member.
We need a Scaramouche as head of the Senate – not an old, homely rat.
Forcing the GOP to go on record may well be the best thing McConnell has done so far. Let them own failing to follow thru on the years of carping about Obamacare, let them have to try and deal with the backlash from people who supported them, let them think they can somehow spin the fact that the had nothing ready after they told us for years to ” just give them control.” We did and still they have nothing, do nothing. At least we knew the Dems were going to shaft us.
Assuming this is a clean repeal, it may stop the calls for #RepealMcConnell except from those who have felt betrayed by him in the past.
Cluster is fine, but you need the graphic of the dumpster fire to be complete.
That was Kemberlee’s best moment of all/.
McConnell and Ryan may be effective in knowing and employing the rules of the House and Senate but they lack the fire and determination to get the agenda done. They may have shown skill in getting their current positions but they have shown no devotion to country or cause. Trump is obnoxious and has the social ability of a bull but his aims are admirable. These two make no real effort to lead their respective groups to back his agenda. It is as if these two just want to stay aloof and have the deniability of saying that they were never for Trump’s agenda and therefore they did the right thing. If I had my way neither would be there next term.
There’s a fascinating tour d’main of propaganda being put out by Hatchlings (supporters of Orin Hatch) claiming that Mike Lee’s very principled, very correct stand was a move to “support ObamaDoggle.
It’s just amazing…
Hatch is another irrefutable argument for term limits.
MCConnell did not hold a confirmation hearing on what’s his nuts throughout all of 2016, like he promised. I was very surprised he kept his word then. He may turn out to have some redeemable qualities after all.
You may be being way too generous.
1) barring a coup, Obama would be out of office in January. No longer able to grant favors and payoffs.
2) everyone in DC expected and hoped that Hillary would win, and therefore would have the ability to reward favors. And a corrupt history of doing so.
3) By holding off on confirming Garland, based on the beliefs of DC, he was actually saving the Supreme Court seat for Hillary to fill.
4) How much would Hillary have paid to get Supreme Court Justice Huma Abedin Weiner?
McConnell does nothing for the country and everything for himself.
It will be interesting to see how many “R” Senators are no shows for the vote.
Even if the Republicans in the Senate vote to repeal/defund Obamacare next week, it will still go nowhere. Why, because you have to get the House to agree. Just a few week ago, the House passed a bill to modify Obamacare. What happened? The Senate trashed it and wasted weeks crafting their own bill. Which, in turn, failed. All of this healthcare stuff is political strategy.
The entire House is up for reelection in 2018. And nothing is going to get done, where healthcare is concerned, until until just before the midterms. This is designed to buy time for Congressmen facing reelection to assess the feelings of their constituents and to gauge their potential primary opposition. Only 1/3 of the Senate is up for reelection in 2018, so most of your obstructionism on this subject will come from that body. The problem that cropped up, was the fact that public opinion, backed up by the efforts of President Trump, derailed the strategic timeline here. The healthcare issue was supposed to lie dormant as the Congress went on their summer vacation. This vacation lasts the entire month of August. Then you only have 9 of the last 16 weeks of the year where both houses of Congress are in session. During that time, you have a budget that has to be addressed, and hopefully passed.
An additional benefit to the Establishment Congress, of the healthcare fiasco, it that it is being used as an excuse to avoid supporting the President’s agenda. The Congress is claiming that they can not address tax reform, the upcoming budget or even the construction of the border wall because they have to resolve Obamacare. So, look for Congress to continue to drag its feet on this issue, as well as tax reform, the budget and approving Trump appointments.