Apparently, there just wasn't enough humiliation to go around last week when House Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to pull Trumpcare from the floor amid mass defections from both Freedom Caucus and moderate Republicans. They're looking for more.
Just days after President Trump said he was moving on to other issues, senior White House officials are now saying they have hope that they can still score the kind of big legislative victory that has so far eluded Mr. Trump. Vice President Mike Pence was dispatched to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for lunchtime talks.
“We’re not going to retrench into our corners or put up dividing lines,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said after a meeting of House Republicans that was dominated by a discussion of how to restart the health negotiations. “There’s too much at stake to get bogged down in all of that.”
The House Republican whip, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, said of Democrats, “Their celebration is premature. We are closer to repealing Obamacare than we ever have been before.”
How is that possible? Do they have a super secret new bill whipped up over the weekend? Have they dug up enough dirt on the 30-50 Republicans who defected to blackmail them into submission? Do they believe the Freedom Caucus maniacs are going to give up their demands for repeal purity?
Because if none of those things have happened, this isn't going anywhere. Oh, and Paul Ryan is full of bullshit. That's not news, per se. But in this case, where he's saying "we're not going to put up dividing lines"? That's just what he did in a conference call with major donors Monday, saying 10 percent of his caucus is still in "opposition party mode."