Will Obamacare repeal/replace pass Congress?

[Mr. Morden]

They might be able to pass some minor tweaks and call that a "replacement", but that's as far as it'll go.

[Mr. Morden]

Btw, to repeat what I wrote last week:

Why does it seem like people are vacillating back and forth between "Congressional Republicans are lap dogs who'll vote with Trump no matter what" and "Trump won't be able to get anything passed through Congress"?

[Mr. Morden]

Ryan says his plan will pass the House:

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/paul-ryan-obamacare-repeal-votes-235793

I don't know, but I'm inclined to believe he's telling the truth.

There will be 218 votes. There won't be 51 votes in the Senate. Also RyanCare, interestingly, may end up not on the docket because of this. All the ObamaCare political capital may end up going to this and if it fails, RyanCare may not even come up.

Personally I think they end up leaving 90% of the law in and end up agreeing to a status quo, more or less, with a conservative dressing.

Aside from Rand Paul and perhaps Mike Lee, I can't think of anyone McConnell or Trump can't potentially convince to bring on board.  Ted Cruz seems like someone who should have already pushed back against it, but he has not, leading me to believe he'll back it when push comes to shove.  We'll see, I guess.

I'm not convinced McConnell actually wants it to pass.  The fact that he's bypassing the Senate committees to just vote on the House bill suggests that he might just be going through the motions, so everyone who needs to be on record voting for "Obamacare repeal" will be able to do so, and then they can move on to Plan B, whatever that is.

[Mr. Morden]

Did anyone really think they were going to be able to do this??  

Well, many folks here seemed to be under the impression that because they confirmed his Cabinet, that meant that the Republican in Congress were going to vote with Trump on everything.  The only dissenting votes would be those allowed by leadership that didn't prevent passage (e.g., Collins and Murkowski on DeVos), and so everything they wanted to pass would go through.

[Mr. Morden]

The real question is what happens to the Republicans when they prove unable to accomplish what was arguably their primary campaign issue even with total Republican control. How will their base respond to that failure? How will Republicans run on the issue of healthcare in 2018?

Most of them will have voted for the repeal.  They can blame the failure to pass it on the RINO squishes like Susan Collins who voted it down (never mind the fact that some of those voting against it have objections from the right).

[Mr. Morden]

Could the Cassidy-Collins bill pass, assuming that Trump and the congressional leadership endorsed it after the current bill fails?  Unlike Ryan's version, it would not lose votes to any defections from the "left" end of the spectrum within the GOP caucus.  (I mean, Susan Collins co-wrote it, so I guess that's a given.)  But would there be so many defections on the right that it wouldn't pass?