The Republicans’ ‘Seven-Year War’ to repeal the Affordable Care Act appears dead. Last night, three GOP senators bucked their party and president, siding with Democrats to vote down a last-minute effort to repeal portions of the law. …
After this, it seems unlikely that Republicans will revive their legislative campaign against Obamacare.
(Washington Post, July 28, 2017)
No doubt you recall that Trump made repealing and replacing this Act the signature promise of his presidential campaign. But if you think he’s the biggest loser, think again.
For Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is the one with egg all over his face. This is the only way to describe his look when the die was cast in the wee hours on Friday.
Of course, this is the same McConnell of Kentucky who was the bane of Obama’s presidency. Because he spent every day executing an open and notorious Republican conspiracy to make Obama the worst president in US history.
Here is how McConnell famously took pride in this conspiracy on the July 10, 2011, edition of FOX News:
Well that is true, making Obama a one-term President is my single most important political goal along with every active Republican in the country.
Repealing and replacing Obama’s signature achievement of healthcare reform was always their holy grail. And McConnell was hailed as such a master of the legislative process, everyone assume he could get his Republican caucus to pass this bill as easily as a DA could get a grand jury to indict a “ham sandwich.” This is why most will blame him more than Trump for this spectacular, humiliating legislative failure.
But McConnell can still gloat over the unprecedented way he refused even to grant Obama’s Supreme Court nominee a hearing during the final nine months of his presidency.
Still, here’s to Mitch for failing – not only to make Obama a one-term president but also to vindicate that attempt by repealing Obamacare.
That said, I’d be remiss not to note the obvious ironies inherent in Senator John McCain of Arizona killing this bill, which he did in the well of the Senate with a dramatic thumbs down.
Most notably, McCain was the candidate Obama defeated for the presidency in 2008. More to the point, though, he is the war hero Trump famously dissed with this infamous riff:
He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.
(New York Times, July 18, 2015)
What you may not know, though, is that Trump pulled a complete 180. Specifically, he started this week hailing McCain as a hero and ended it on the phone groveling for his vote – just minutes before McCain gave his now famous thumbs down.
As I texted an old friend, this was McCain serving it cold with a side order of “How do you like your hero now, bitch!”
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