Why do Republicans keep flinging themselves at the hard, unpopular wall of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with something that will kick tens of millions of people off coverage and strip tens or even hundreds of millions more people of important protections? Money has more than a little something to do with it:
[Colorado Sen. Cory] Gardner is in charge of his party’s midterm re-election push, and he warned that donors of all stripes were refusing to contribute another penny until the struggling majority produced some concrete results.
“Donors are furious,” one person knowledgeable about the private meeting quoted Mr. Gardner as saying. “We haven’t kept our promise.”
Those Republican bills have been really, really unpopular with Americans overall, but the Republican base still wants repeal … and probably isn’t feeling very confident about their party’s competence, watching the repeated failed efforts.
Republicans say the fund-raising drop-off has been steep and across the board, from big donations to the small ones the party solicits online from the grass roots. They say the hostile views of both large and small donors are in unusual alignment and that the negative sentiment is crystallized in the fund-raising decline.
But let’s not kid ourselves: if the big donors and the small donors disagreed on this one, we know which way the Republicans would go—and we know who senators are hearing from directly.
Mr. Gardner told his colleagues that a major Colorado contributor who played a role in his own campaign says party donors are reluctant to give any more money until congressional Republicans demonstrate results.
What's the only thing stopping Republicans from passing Trumpcare? YOUR PHONE CALLS. They are scared of constituent pressure. Call your senators at (202) 224-3121 and urge them to vote “NO." (After you call, please tell us how it went.)