I'm still trying to figure out how it even gets close in the Senate. I can imagine it passing the House with no more than a couple of votes to spare. That could happen even with close to a couple of dozen GOP defections. But why would Republicans bother to whip a majority on an unpopular bill that appears to have virtually no hope of passing the Senate?
I think that the prospect of passing the bill in the senate is slim only because Rand Paul refuses to budge on accepting anything but one outcome: a full repeal of the bill. That means Republicans can only afford to lose one more senator. I think their best hope is revising the bill in a way that mostly placates centrists, and hoping that Cruz, Lee, et al. eventually come on board. Otherwise, they might have to start all over.
