The colossal failure of this iteration of Trumpcare referred to as the Skinny Repeal Bill is but an example of the seriousness given to policies by the modern Republican Party. A party cannot govern by slogans, and this exposed them for what they are, and these panelists were merciless in speaking truth to them.
These panelists used the Trumpcare debacle to state a necessary truth
These panelists of various ideologies stated what should have been said about the GOP for a long time. This truth would have saved us if stated earlier.
It is important to understand how immoral and unprincipled the GOP has become. This is how Senator Lindsey Graham described the Skinny Repeal Bill the Senate was voting on last night.
“The skinny bill as policy is a disaster,” Graham said. “The skinny bill as a replacement for Obamacare is a fraud. Not only do we not replace Obamacare, we politically owned the collapse of health care.”
But Senator Graham still voted for the bill under the pretense that it would be improved in the conference with the more dysfunction House members. If that stance isn’t morally corrupt, then what is?
Mark Halperin hit the nail on the head.
“No one knew what would happen if that measure had passed,” Halperin said. “No one really knew what was going to happen as they tried to get assurances from Paul Ryan that the House wouldn’t just pass this, but I think their fears were right. If next step with that the bill came out of that Senate it was possible that Paul Ryan would be left with no other solution but to just force the house to vote on that measure. And that measure, as Senator McCain and others, said, that’s not a policy. That was a vehicle to try to move the process along. And now we have the unfathomable situation of Tom Price, the Secretary of HHS and President Trump are going to have to administer the Affordable Care Act.”
John Heilemann excoriated the Republican Party for its fraud on the American people.
“There’s no question this is a huge failure for Trump, and there’s no question that it’s a great setback to his agenda his possibility of getting things done the rest of the year,” said Heilmann. “There’s a much larger thing than that. It’s not just a failure. It’s an exposé of the fundamental rot at the heart of the modern Republican Party. This is a party that spent two successive presidential cycles saying the most central thing that it was going to do was to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The reason they failed is (A), it’s really hard to repeal an entitlement but (B), they didn’t take seriously the job of what would happen when they eventually got into power, and they spent eight years saying they were going to do this and never really seriously got down to the business of creating a workable alternative and that is what this last week’s, seven months has exposed. There was no alternative. There was no replacement and in the end that as much as anything doomed this. And you look at the party now you say look, this is what you guys said you were going to do. You were totally unprepared for it when the time came where you had total power over Washington DC. If the Republican Party ever wants to be considered a governing party it’s going to have to look at the lessons of this and learn that it has to be serious and responsible and if it’s going to make promises it has to try at least to keep them.”
Former Senator Ted Cruz Communications Director Rick Tyler then hit his party real hard.
“The fraud really is,” Tyler said. “I hate to say this about my party. The fraud was there was a repeal and replace. There wasn’t. And it’s embarrassing. And there’s no leadership. And no one took the time to say what happens if we get in power? Why aren’t we a serious party right? And they had nothing to replace it with, and so here we are. The second problem is the president was a liability in the entire process. Even if they had something to replace it with, the president was a liability in terms of he’s got the bully pulpit. He’s the one who can move, and he’s revealed now that he doesn’t have a constituency that can move the Congress to do his bidding.”
This is the modern Republican Party. They simply cannot govern. And it is time everybody understands that and vote accordingly. One cannot make policies with soundbites.