Remember when Republicans gained the Senate majority in 2014 and Mitch McConnell and John Boehner wrote an op-ed promising that Republicans were going to show that they could govern? We know what happened to Boehner and the biggest achievement McConnell can show is blowing up the Supreme Court nomination process. Blowing things up, in fact, is what Republicans have really perfected, without yet showing that they can put things back together. Now they're getting ready for the biggest explosion yet—the destruction of Obamacare—and the only plan they have for putting it back together is getting the Democrats to do it.
“I’d like to do it tomorrow, but reality is another matter sometimes,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee that will help lead the “repeal and replace” efforts. “We have to live with the real world. And the real world right now is that the Democrats won’t help with anything.” […]
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has announced plans to put an Obamacare repeal on the Senate floor come Jan. 3. But that will only set the stage for a future repeal bill that will have to tackle major decisions such as a sunset date and interim measures to stabilize insurance markets. […]
Only by dismantling Obamacare first, Republicans say, will they have a chance to persuade enough Democrats to support a replacement plan — and Democrats have already signaled that they will not do so.
“We all know we have to repeal it to get them to even settle down and work with us at all,” Hatch said.
Democrats don't, as a matter a fact, know that. The consistent response from Chuck Schumer to McConnell is get bent—you break it, you own it. Because at some point Republicans are going to have to demonstrate that they can actually do stuff that doesn't destroy the lives of millions of Americans, and when better to do it under a unified government?
It's not going to happen, because Republicans aren't unified. The maniacs are calling for repeal to happen now, completely with the band-aid just ripped off and damn the consequences. House Speaker Paul Ryan is trying to temper that, is saying that Republicans would move "as well and as fast as we can but make sure that the transition does not pull the rug out from under people." But that's not going to work with the Freedom Caucus.
They can't even come together on repeal. How in the hell—after six years of abject failure—could they come up with "replace"?