Balloon Juice has obtained exclusive, behind-the-scenes video depicting Obamacare repeal attempts by Donald J. Trump and the Republicans in Congress:
New Repeal-O-Meter should arrive from ACME Corporation later this week. Hope the results are consistent with prior attempts.
Open thread!
Jackie
Busting a gut laughing
danielx
I want a video of the Slim Pickins ride in Dr. Strangelove, with Slim’s features changed to McConnell’s reptilian visage.
NotMax
Word circulating that Dolt 45 has misplaced his gold-colored signing crayon…
Yarrow
I’ve been busy all evening and am just now seeing the news. So, YAY! The Deathcare bill is dead for the moment. But they’re going to try to repeal the ACA without any kind of replacement? Am I understanding that correctly?
hellslittlestangel
@Yarrow: “Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRW7pITY5Cg
NotMax
@NotMax
…and aides are, um, Russian to dig up a replacement.
(Try the waitstaff, tip the veal.)
:)FlipYrWhig
@Yarrow: As I understand it. But I don’t get why that’s supposed to win any more votes than Acme Health Care Reconciliation Plan-in-a-Box did. Maybe it placates the ultras on the right, but there are still the Medicaid-expansion-state Republicans and the “process hawk” Republicans who started squawking about what the lawmaking process _should_ look like. So I have to think the plan is for McConnell to demonstrate how little support for just plain repeal there is either. But that makes me think that he doesn’t _really_ want to demonstrate that, because it would expose his own weakness. Maybe it’s just to get Trump off his back? Strange.
Frankensteinbeck
@Yarrow:
Last I heard from a political analyst this was McConnell’s way of punishing his caucus for not falling in line, by making them go on the record voting to not repeal Obamacare.
Speaking of which, at what point in this process do I get to declare that ‘Republicans always fall in line’ is proven wrong? Is this enough, or would the axiom count as fulfilled if McConnell pulls off something else?
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: Yeah, that puzzles me too. Also, if it were a straight repeal, wouldn’t it be ineligible for reconciliation and thus require 60 votes or nuking the filibuster?
Frankensteinbeck
@Betty Cracker:
There is apparently an old bill nobody wanted to vote on technically in the system and needing only 50.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
Trial balloon that ain’t gonna float. Quickie alternative to his saying, “I really, really suck at this stuff.”
piratedan
@Frankensteinbeck: at which point, If McConnell does that, he’ll likely win the war but suffer a Pyrrhic defeat at the ballot box, yeah, they may survive a wingnut primary challenge but they can then kiss their political careers goodbye (or so we hope, because its really tentative if the GOP suffers for any decision that they make).
FlipYrWhig
@Frankensteinbeck: But I don’t get that, because IIRC repealing Obamacare increases the budget deficit.
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: Hadn’t heard that. Thanks! The lunatics won’t do that — repeal without replacing, will they?
FlipYrWhig
@piratedan: I think it’s just too easy for someone like Graham or McCain to say, and burnish their own (slim) credentials for independence and reasonable-mindedness in the process, “Of course I still support Republican alternatives to Obamacare, but we owe it to the American people to slow this down, get it right, and get the world’s most august deliberative body back to working the way it’s supposed to. I respect Leader McConnell but he’s wrong about this.” Etc. Nobody’s losing their primary because of being a dick to Mitch McConnell.
BBA
@piratedan: I think they figure they have the midterms in the bag, and 2020 is far enough away that they’ll be able to obfuscate the cause of the health collapse. If Trump falls they can blame him, if not well it’s Obama’s fault for not making his law able to withstand a repeal. (This is arrant nonsense but it’s the kind of arrant nonsense that McConnell has been solemnly intoning for his entire career.)
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s much easier to fall in line and be a united opposition when one knows that the reactionary bills one passes will be vetoed.
McConnell knows this. (The Teabaggers in the House haven’t figured it out yet.) But he also knows that power drains away once he starts losing. This is a big loss for him, and it’s not going to get easier for him going forward. It’s hard to see them being more united going forward than they are right now.
So, tl;dr, yes, Republicans fall in line when they’re in the minority. When they’re in the majority, well, it’s much more complicated.
Cheers,
Scott.
(And the rule is short-hand anyway, not an iron-clad rule.)
BBA
I still expect wrestling-style maneuvering – somebody’s gonna hit the
refereeparliamentarian with a folding chair, and then anything goes.NotMax
@Betty Cracker
It’s HHS Secretary Tom Price’s gushiest, gooiest wet dream.
frosty
@Another Scott: So, more of a guideline than a rule then (sorry, too late to link to the movies I’ve seen this line in.) :-)
Frankensteinbeck
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t either, but it’s what I heard about how he would do it. Second hand, so I may have misunderstood.
@Betty Cracker:
It seems seriously unlikely. McConnell was facing rebellion from moderates with the old one, and this is worse. It was too unpalatable to get a vote the first time, after all. I suspect this is a tantrum, not a serious proposal. But… with these lunatics, who the Hell knows?
FlipYrWhig
@Another Scott: Also, IMHO the biggest threat to Republicans is that they fuck up SO VISIBLY that it creates a tidal-wave election where Trump’s corruption and Republican incompetence and malice just keep amplifying one another. At a certain point the self-preservation instinct is going to kick in and they’ll decide they’ll reduce the risk of a wave by… doing… stuff. I think the more they see Trump as a lost cause the more they’ll try to get things done that look, if not reasonable exactly, more like the normal processes of politics, rather than a smash-and-grab underwritten by rogue billionaires and oligarchs.
But I’ve been wrong quite a lot.
frosty
Betty, thanks for the larf. BJ is keeping me sane and this sort of nonsense is a big part of it.
frosty +celebrating and dammit I have to go to work tomorrow.
prostratedragon
Earthquake pills.
That cunning refusal to support Obama in calling out Russian interference in the election might turn out to be like swallowing a large can of them. Step carefully, now!
Betty Cracker
My fondest wish for this situation is that the media coverage is brutal — Repubs in disarray! — and they turn on each other. You know Trump is mad enough to stomp bunnies. He doesn’t have a fucking clue how healthcare works, but he understands scoreboards, and he has been itching to undo Obamacare since he was sworn in. I hope he melts down and starts attacking congressional Republicans and generally amping up the crazy. ?
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Better than eating their young, they are going to eat each other till there’s nothing left.
Or one can hope anyway.
WTF
I find it all quite humorous. When you push the Overton Window so far to the right, and probably the left, without ensuring the dimensions of the window remain constant vis a vis width, you end up with little more than a razor thin gun port that excludes the left and right flank of your party from being able to use it.
Or should I have my head examined again?
WTF
@Betty Cracker:
Q: Why do you want to repeal the ACA? (Obamacare, Romneycare, that appears to function well in the state of Mass., Heritage Foundation Spaghetti tossed at the wall to see if it is al dente)
Trump: Because it is there!
Even with respect to mountain climbing, it has never really seemed like a suitable reason to do something dangerous.
Mike in NC
Fat Bastard and his idiot minions couldn’t organize a two car funeral.
Pangloss
These guys couldn’t run a third rate carnival midway.
Brachiator
Great cartoon analogy.
Also, turns out that Acme Useless Gadgets, Inc., is a subsidiary of The Trump Organization.
WTF
Can’t we just officiously change the official name of what is now known as the ACA (Obamacare) to Trumpcare (officially) and officially move on to Taxes?
MattF
Krugman notes that, according to Politico, Trump and Congressional Republicans took it for granted that repealing Ocare would be easy-peasy, done by President’s Day, end of February. Krug says their error is mostly due to The Bubble, but there’s also breathtaking cynicism, along the assumption that Democrats were just faking it all along.
TheronWare
Meep meep!