Reince Priebus being out is news. But health care policy collapse >>>>> soap opera in the WH. Trump is still President, so failure is intrinsic to the administration.
Vann Newkirk II/Atlantic:
The seeds of McConnell’s failure were planted way back in January, when House Republicans finally began to deliver on seven years of promises on repealing Obamacare. The first signs of inter-party discontent came with the earliest decisions as a new governing party, as GOP leaders couldn’t decide whether they wanted to just repeal Obamacare altogether—and thus absorb the political risks of something on the order of 30 million uninsured people—or use the opportunity to replace Obamacare with a more conservative health-care paradigm. They weren’t helped by the fact that President Trump displayed Heisenberg-like uncertainty regarding the White House’s official stance on that front.
In the end, ambition won out, and House Speaker Paul Ryan began the task of reshaping the U.S. health care system in the GOP’s image. And despite having almost a decade to trial-balloon policy alternatives and develop an ideological braintrust to achieve his “Better Way,” the effort highlighted just how woefully underprepared Republicans were.
I’m not at all surprised the GOP health care effort from the GOP failed. Collins and Murkowski were solid, and give the women their due. i wasn’t expecting McCain to be by himself, thought others would join him. But the GOP simply didn’t trust itself enough to make this work. It’s a huge fail for McConnell and Ryan. Watch Trump run from them now. But who will protect him if he does?
Jeet Heer/ TNR:
Trump, “Mooch,” and the Rise of the New York Douchebag
The president and his foul-mouthed communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, are members of a very particular species.
In most administrations, Scaramucci’s public badmouthing of his colleagues would be a major liability, likely a fireable offense. But Trump operates from a different set of rules—the same rules, it would seem, that Scaramucci operates from. Reading his rant to The New Yorker, it was hard not to recall the infamous Access Hollywood tape in which Trump boasts about sexually assaulting women: “You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy.” Indeed, Scaramucci is a sort of mini-Trump: brash, hyper-masculine, bro-loyal, sexually crass, and street smart, perhaps, but not actually smart.
Which is to say, Trump and his new minion aren’t just colorful personalities, but members of a particular species: the New York douchebag. That’s why Scaramucci may long remain in good standing—as long as he doesn’t break one golden rule.
Josh Barro/Business Insider:
If you've been asking why McCain is getting so much credit for this hit job, rather than his two female Republican colleagues without whose "no" votes the bill would have also passed, one of the answers is that he has sought to make himself the fall guy.
But it's true: This was a conspiracy of three. And one thing McCain has in common with Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski is that all three were in an unusually good position to take the blame for killing Obamacare.
Collins represents a state, Maine, that voted for Hillary Clinton. Unlike every other Republican who remains in the Senate, she voted against the 2015 bill to repeal most of Obamacare that President Barack Obama vetoed — no hypocrisy here.
Collins is rumored to want to run for governor of Maine. As long as Obamacare stays the law, there will be a pot of Medicaid expansion funds waiting for the state to unlock, creating a windfall into the state budget Collins would oversee.
Murkowski, of Alaska, is one of the few senators who answer to a truly moderate voter base. She won reelection in 2016 with 44% of the vote, against 29% for a candidate to her right and 25% for two candidates to her left. She's already shown, in 2010, that she can lose a Republican primary and come back to win the general election as a write-in.
When the ice-bucket challenge was a thing, Murkowski jumped into below-freezing Alaskan ocean water instead of just taking a bucket of water to the head. She's not afraid of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
And McCain? Well, how do you threaten an 80-year-old man who is facing down an aggressive form of brain cancer? By threatening to back his primary challenger in 2022?
James Hohmann/WaPo:
-- A lot of the media coverage in the wake of the vote will focus on McCain, because he's the most famous, and Collins was always going to vote “no.” But Murkowski’s opposition was equally decisive and perhaps most illustrative of the problems ahead for Trump.
USA Today:
Russia probe could reveal Trump's closest-held secrets
Federal investigators are expected to delve into records revealing some of the President’s most closely guarded secrets, including how much money he makes, who he does business with and how reliant he is on wealthy, politically-connected foreigners.
A half-dozen experts contacted by USA TODAY said they expect Mueller and his team to pursue everything from Trump’s income tax returns to the bank records underlying his companies’ real estate transactions in a quest to identify people who have financial relationships with the President and his business and political associates.
David Drucker/Wash Examiner:
Republicans render vote of no confidence in Trump's Russia policy
The package sanctioning Iran, North Korea and Russia includes language requiring congressional approval to waive penalties on Moscow, a loss of negotiating flexibility for the president, a self-styled deal maker, that his administration furiously tried to kill.
Peggy Noonan/WSJ, ICYMI and note the language and imagery:
Trump Is Woody Allen Without the Humor
He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity...
It’s all whimpering accusation and finger-pointing: Nobody’s nice to me. Why don’t they appreciate me?
His public brutalizing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions isn’t strong, cool and deadly; it’s limp, lame and blubbery. “Sessions has taken a VERY weak position on Hillary Clinton crimes,” he tweeted this week. Talk about projection.
“Limp.” Hmmmm. That’s deliberate.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
REPUBLICANS WHO VOTED FOR BILL KNEW IT COULD BE DISASTROUS: An important point in the New York Times overview:
“Even some senators who voted for the bill Friday conceded that its enactment could have been disastrous. It would have repealed the mandate that most Americans have insurance, without another mechanism to push Americans to maintain insurance coverage. Under those circumstances, healthy people could wait to buy insurance until they are sick. The insurance markets would become dominated by the chronically ill, and premiums would soar, insurers warned.”
Let’s not forget that most Senate Republicans, in an act of staggering bad faith, voted for something they knew (if the House passed it, which Ryan suggested could happen) could end up becoming law, despite knowing it would be massively damaging to the country.