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Remember when Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan were going to prove that Republicans could govern, and all they needed was a unified government? Once they had both chambers of Congress and the White House, it was going to be all business. Less than a month into that "unified" government, they're falling deeper into disarray and that one thing they all agreed on—Obamacare repeal—is slipping away.
Consider Paul Ryan's feel-good meeting with Senate Republicans on Tuesday. The House speaker trekked across the Capitol to reassure senators that lawmakers are making more progress toward repealing the health care law than the media are reporting.
But not everyone was buying it. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) left before it was over, having heard enough of a conversation that he says centers around keeping Obamacare's Medicaid expansion intact and creating tax credits that he called a "new entitlement program," though a Republican in the room rebutted the notion that the topic of Medicaid expansion came up in the Tuesday meeting with Ryan.
"I hear things that are unacceptable to me," Paul said in an interview afterward. "If they don't seem to care what conservatives think about complete repeal of Obamacare, they're going to be shocked when they count the votes." […]
It may take a direct intervention from Trump to get the party's warring factions in line. […]
At first, Trump's call to repeal and replace simultaneously disrupted the party—which at the time was intent on repealing now and figuring out the rest later. But eventually, they came around to Trump's apparent position and stopped sniping for a few weeks. Now that the party is back in disarray, no one is quite sure what Trump wants. They're straining to read the tea leaves from a president whose latest statements about Obamacare have confused the timeline and offered no clear direction.
The hard-liners in the Freedom Caucus are using this confusion to become even more entrenched. Trump has other things to think about, clearly, and expects Ryan and McConnell (who has faded into the wallpaper on this one) to figure it out. Meanwhile, Tom Price and the Trump regime team are putting the wheels in motion to sabotage the law, destroying it from the inside if they can.
At some point, and it really should be sooner rather than later to save everyone's asses, the Republicans need to recognize that they will own the destruction of our health care. That it will be Trumpcare and he and they will be blamed for it all. That what they need to do is take a few deep breaths and figure the few things Democrats would like to tweak, too. Do those, call it "fixed" and declare victory. That would be best for everyone involved, especially the people who have health insurance and enjoy it. But the maniacs aren't going to let that happen, so we all have to suffer.