Home / General / McConnell’s Utter Contempt For Republican “Moderates” May Well Be Justified

McConnell’s Utter Contempt For Republican “Moderates” May Well Be Justified

/
/
/
1536 Views

Above: “Why so glum, chum? My health insurance is going to be fine!”

With Collins and Rand Paul having claimed their golden tickets, the remaining marginal votes in the Republican conference — several of whom declared the massive Medicaid cuts in BCRA unacceptable — have enormous leverage. As we discussed yesterday, in his revised bill McConnell offered them…nothing on their most important ask. McConnell, apparently, assumes they can be bought off for pennies on the dollar with some piddlyshit pork from the slush fund he created by keeping some of the ACA’s tax increases.

The problem for the country is that he may well be right:

When the Senate Republican leadership unveiled its latest plan to roll back Obamacare, senators Rand Paul and Susan Collins quickly announced opposition. With the two free passes to vote no claimed, the next Republican to oppose the bill would deny it a majority. That Republican would apparently be Nevada’s Dean Heller, who had denounced in unequivocal terms the plan’s enormous Medicaid cuts, which are unchanged in the latest bill. But Heller has remained curiously silent.
Ominously, Mike Allen reports, “Republicans keep telling me Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, a third apparent ‘nay,’ will be ‘bought off.’” If Republicans can manage to buy off Senator Geary — I mean, Heller — then they stand a decent chance of working the remaining senators who have expressed concern about the bill.

One of the key dynamics of this legislative saga is that Republican objections to the bill, however strong or unambiguous, tend to melt away in the face of partisan pressure. Senator Bill Cassidy had once articulated the strongest opposition to Trumpcare, arguing that coverage gains in Obamacare should actually be expanded rather than rolled back. Cassidy endorsed the “Jimmy Kimmel test,” saying he would not support any bill that makes medical care unaffordable for an American with preexisting conditions. His new version of the Kimmel Test seems to be that he will not vote for anything unless it satisfies the following conditions: (1) It is a piece of legislation (2) that Republicans want to pass.

Meanwhile, even as of a few days ago, reports indicated that an outright majority of Republican senators rejected Ted Cruz’s amendment to allow insurers to sell plans that don’t protect preexisting conditions. Now that resistance is “melting away,” reports Caitlin Owens, because, as a GOP aide tells her, “No one wants to be bad guy.” (You might think “bad guy” means a person who denies medical care to sick people, but in this context, it indicates precisely the opposite.)

We are on the verge of a rollback of a major welfare benefit that is unprecedented in scope, one that would have utterly devastating consequences. People across the country, and especially Nevadans and West Virginians, need to make their voices heard. I’ve never understood people who were confident that the Trump administration would be a Carter-like dead-end in policy terms, and the high level of danger the still-robust Reagan coalition poses to the country has never been more evident.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :