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United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)


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11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Wow, this woman is a Repug through and through. "McCain’s primary rival urges him to step aside after diagnosis — and suggests she could replace him"

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A day after news came out about Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) brain cancer diagnosis, his onetime political opponent urged the ailing senator to think about his political future sooner rather than later — and expressed interest in the possibility of her taking over his Senate seat.

“I hope Sen. McCain is going to look long and hard at this, that his family and his advisers are going to look at this, and they’re going to advise him to step away as quickly as possible, so that the business of the country and the business of Arizona being represented at the federal level can move forward,” Kelli Ward, who lost to McCain in last year’s Republican primary and is now running to unseat U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), said Thursday during an interview with an Indiana radio station.

In a statement posted later on her website, Ward said McCain’s cancer is “both devastating and debilitating” and he “owes it to the people of Arizona to step aside” when he’s no longer able to perform his duties.

McCain’s office announced Wednesday that he’d been diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer. The diagnosis, which followed a surgery to remove a blood clot above the left eye, raised questions about when and if he will go back to the Senate.

McCain isn’t up for reelection until 2022. He also had not indicated that he will relinquish his seat because of his health, even assuring in a recent tweet that he’ll be “back soon.”

Still, the possibility of him leaving was raised in Ward’s interview. Host Pat Miller asked Ward, a family physician and a former Arizona state senator, about whether she believes McCain will be able to return to Washington.

“I would never presume to say what someone’s prognosis is without having examined them. As a Christian, I know there can always be miracles. But the likelihood that John McCain is going to be able to come back to the Senate and be at full force for the people of our state and the people of the United States is low,” said Ward.

Ward went on to talk about what Arizona law requires in the event that McCain does leave office. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) will have to appoint someone from the same party to fill the vacancy until the 2018 general election.

Asked if her name is getting “thrown in the hat” as a possible replacement, Ward said: “Well, you know, I certainly hope so. Because, you know, I have a proven track record from years in the state Senate of being extremely effective and of listening to the voice of the people that I represent.”

Ward added that she proved to be a worthy challenger against McCain last year. (She came in second, with 39.2 percent of the primary vote.)

“We can’t wait until the 2018 election waiting around to accomplish the Trump agenda, to secure the border and stop illegal immigration and repeal Obamacare and fix the economy and fix the veterans administration,” she said. “All those things need to be done, and we can’t be at a standstill while we wait for John McCain to determine what he’s going to do.”

Ward was immediately slammed by critics, who viewed her comments as insensitive, self-serving and opportunistic. She dismissed the criticisms as fake news perpetuated by liberals.

In a combative interview Friday with Arizona radio hosts Mac Watson and Larry Gaydos, Ward maintained that should McCain become debilitated, “of course he should step aside.”

“I got to tell you, Dr. Ward. Have you no shame? I mean, I think this is low class. I think you’re kicking the man when he’s down, the week he’s diagnosed with brain cancer, with really what I believe is a despicable comment,” one of the hosts told Ward.

One of the hosts said Ward is already “dancing” on McCain’s grave, called her a “vulture” and told her she’s “desperate for attention.”

Ward shot back, saying the hosts are putting words in her mouth and unfairly attacking her character.

“I am a caring, compassionate physician. I am a competent, qualified political candidate, and I look forward to getting to Washington, D.C. You all have made this about John McCain and Kelli Ward,” she said, adding that she’s “laser-focused” on her race against Flake.

Ward’s supporters have rallied behind her in comments to her Facebook post about McCain. Some wrote that while they sympathize with McCain’s illness, they agree with Ward’s statements.

Ward’s recent interviews aren’t the first time she urged McCain to leave public office.

She caused a stir last year when she suggested in a Politico interview that McCain, who was then 79, is too old and is likely to die while in office.

“I’m a doctor. The life expectancy of the American male is not 86. It’s less,” Ward said in the August 2016 interview, adding later: “He’s become pretty sour. A pretty sour old guy.”

In another interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that same day, Ward suggested that McCain should retire and said she knows “what happens to the body and the mind at the end of life.”

Taken aback, Todd asked Ward whether she feels comfortable diagnosing McCain without personally examining him.

“Diagnosing him as an 80-year-old man, yes, I do,” she said.

McCain has been recovering in his Arizona home. His daughter, Meghan, tweeted Saturday that she and her father went on a hike.

...

What a lovely woman. (note extreme sarcasm)

Holy shit, she just can't wait to get those DC freebies, can she? It doesn't say what kind of doctor she is, but I'm guessing not a gerontologist? She may have done herself in. Arizona is a state with lots of those "pretty sour old men."

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17 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

 I have't seen TT's response to McCain's illness.  I'm almost afraid to even look.  

I don't want to look at all the bullshit to dig it up but there was a general statement wishing McCain well from TT and Melania from the White House. It sounded like an aide wrote it. 

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"Senate Republicans plan to plow ahead with health-care vote this week"

Spoiler

The Senate returns to Washington on Monday with its GOP leaders determined to vote this week on their years-long quest to demolish the Affordable Care Act, even though the goal remains mired in political and substantive uncertainties.

Central questions include whether enough Senate Republicans will converge on any version of their leaders’ health-care plan and whether significant aspects of the legislation being considered can fit within arcane parliamentary rules.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) indicated on Sunday that the majority party may not have enough support to prevail on even a first step — a routine vote to begin the floor debate.

“We’re continuing to work with all of the members. We’re getting much closer to that,” Barrasso, one of the chamber’s few physicians, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Meanwhile, the two Republicans who have been the effort’s most outspoken foes in the Senate relaunched complaints that their leaders are leaving them clueless as to what exactly will be put forward.

Late last week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) adopted a strategy uncharacteristic for a tactician who usually spares his caucus needless difficult votes.

Several days earlier, McConnell had lacked enough support to call for a vote on a bill that would rescind parts of the ACA and replace them with a variety of conservative health policies. He quickly switched, saying the chamber would vote anew on a repeal-only measure passed in late 2015 by both the Senate and House — and vetoed by then-President Barack Obama. Less than 24 hours later, that idea faltered, too.

So McConnell has resorted to a plan C: bringing to the floor an anti-ACA bill passed by the House this spring and allowing senators a sort of free-for-all for substituting in either of the Senate measures or new iterations.

“We are still on track . . . to have a vote early this week,” a McConnell spokesman said on Sunday. “The Senate will consider all types of proposals, Republican and Democrat.”

But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a centrist who says the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act would cut Medicaid in ways that would hurt rural and vulnerable Americans, derided that strategy during an appearance on “Face the Nation.”

Lawmakers “don’t know whether we’re going to be voting on the House bill, the first version of the Senate bill, the second version of the Senate bill, a new version of the Senate bill or a 2015 bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act now and then said that somehow we’ll figure out a replacement over the next two years,” Collins said.

“I don’t think that’s a good approach to facing legislation that affects millions of people and one-sixth of our economy,” she added.

Her sentiment was echoed by conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who contends that the main GOP proposal the Senate has been considering does not go far enough to undermine the ACA. “The real question is, what are we moving to? What are we opening debate to?” Paul said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” He reiterated that he only would support a bill that would remove large portions of the ACA — and not legislation continuing federal subsidies that help millions of people afford their insurance premiums.

Such ideological crosscurrents within his own party are what McConnell has been trying to surmount. The GOP has a narrow majority of 52 senators, and Democrats are unified against the effort to dismantle Obamacare. Given this partisan terrain, Senate leaders are relying on a legislative process known as reconciliation, which allows a bill to be passed with a simple majority when it has budget implications, rather than the customary 60 votes needed to ward off a potential filibuster by opponents.

But the reconciliation strategy hit a roadblock late Friday as Senate Democrats released a set of guidance from the chamber’s parliamentarian, who concluded that aspects of a June 26 version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act probably would not fit within the budget rules. The guidance says several parts of the proposal would require a full 60 votes for approval, including limits on funding for Planned Parenthood and health plans that provide coverage for abortion — both restrictions conservatives have favored.

The parliamentarian also cautioned against a significant part of the GOP bill meant to encourage Americans to maintain health coverage: allowing health plans to freeze out for six months applicants who have allowed their coverage to lapse.

McConnell’s spokesman, Don Stewart, noted that the parliamentarian similarly cautioned against portions of the 2015 ACA repeal bill, but it still passed through the reconciliation process. Neither Stewart nor other Senate staffers said what changes could be contemplated to get around the parliamentary problem.

It's crazy how McTurtle is just not giving up.

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NOOOOOO: "Senator Kid Rock. Don’t Laugh."

Spoiler

As you’re reading this, odds are a Democratic operative in Michigan or Washington, D.C., is listening to Kid Rock’s gravelly voice—rapping, shrieking or crowing, depending on the song—and meticulously cataloguing every single offensive syllable. The renegade musician and prospective candidate for U.S. Senate is an opposition researcher’s dream come true: For more than two decades, Robert Ritchie—or Bobby, as he asks people to call him—has written and performed provocative records about, among other things, extravagant drug use, excessive drinking and sexual exploits with prostitutes, strippers and Hollywood starlets. These lyrics are far from hollow. Kid Rock’s hard-partying image is central to his popularity and has been exhaustively documented in media accounts over the years. Political opponents will be digging through more than just his albums, too: There’s the sex tape he starred in, the arrest following a Waffle House brawl, the no-contest plea to charges he assaulted a DJ at a Nashville strip club, the messy divorce from Pamela Anderson. If that weren’t enough, he has offered other forms of ammunition to potential foes in interviews over the years, such as when he told Rolling Stone of his distaste for Beyoncé (“I like skinny white chicks with big tits”) and gave the New Yorker his stance on same-sex marriage (“I don’t give a fuck if gay people get married. I don’t love anybody who acts like a fuckin’ faggot”).

Because of his manifest rebelliousness—the offensive language, the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll lifestyle, the middle finger to polite company—Kid Rock’s tweet last week announcing that he is considering a campaign for U.S. Senate in Michigan was met with predictable contempt from the political class. How dare the foul-mouthed, long-haired, wifebeater-wearing, Jim Beam-swigging, self-described redneck suggest he belongs in the world’s greatest deliberative body? Moreover, critics had immediate cause to call his bluff: The website he tweeted out, www.kidrockforsenate.com, links to a merchandise store hosted by Warner Bros. Records, and Ritchie, who’s gearing up for a fall tour, also just happened to release two new singles from his forthcoming album. Consensus formed at warp speed in the Acela corridor that it’s a money-making publicity stunt, that Kid Rock for Senate should not be taken seriously.

That might be a huge miscalculation.

Yes, healthy skepticism is warranted: Not a single prominent Republican in Michigan told us they’d heard from Ritchie or his associates about a campaign. Good musicians are great marketers, and Kid Rock has been brilliant in terms of creating and selling a brand. His flirtation with electoral politics could be nothing more than a promotional ploy aimed at rekindling interest in his career—he’s had only one single reach any of Billboard’s charts in the past four years—and boosting his bottom line. And yet this theory doesn’t appear consistent with the man himself: Ritchie, who already boasts a huge and devoted following, has sold tens of millions of albums and amassed what he calls “fuck you money”—enough of it, in fact, that he has given seven-figure sums to charity and capped ticket prices to his concerts at $20 to make them accessible to working-class fans. Meanwhile, he’s earned a reputation in his native southeast Michigan as someone who is earnest when it comes to civic involvement, helping local businesses and headlining major philanthropic events. When Mitt Romney asked for his endorsement ahead of the pivotal Michigan primary in 2012, Ritchie invited him to his Metro Detroit home and peppered him with a list of policy questions, sleeping on the decision before informing Romney the next day he would support him. The two forged an unexpected bond: Romney adopted the patriotic rock anthem “Born Free” as his official campaign song, and Ritchie later praised the former Massachusetts governor as “the most decent motherfucker I’ve ever met in my life.”

None of this guarantees Ritchie will run, but it suggests he shouldn’t be mocked when he says he’s thinking about it—especially now that the media and the left have summarily and sneeringly popped his trial balloon. This same dismissiveness greeted (and motivated) Donald Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, and yes, given that Americans last fall elected a foul-mouthed political novice who was heard boasting on audiotape of grabbing women’s genitals without their permission, it’s worth noting that significant parallels exist between the rock star and the real estate mogul. So if you’re still not taking Kid Rock seriously, here’s why you should: His path to the U.S. Senate is far easier than Trump’s was to the White House.

“Presuming Kid Rock doesn’t get caught in bed with a little boy, or beat up a woman between now and August 2018, he’s going to win the nomination if he gets in,” says Dennis Lennox, a Republican political consultant in Michigan. “I think there’s no question about that. I think he’s the prohibitive favorite if he gets in.”

Trump competed with 16 rivals for the Republican nomination, more than a dozen of whom were established, well-regarded, well-financed campaigners; Ritchie would enter a primary field of three little-known newcomers to partisan politics. Trump was targeted by a national network of influential donors and activists who laughed him off at first, only to mount a desperate scramble to thwart his candidacy once they realized their peril; Ritchie would face little such resistance in a state where primaries aren’t preordained by party bosses. Trump started his run with no obvious base or blueprint for victory; Ritchie would launch a campaign on the strength of his favorite-son status that cuts across socioeconomic boundaries and is particularly resonant with the president’s winning coalition of culturally conservative, populist-minded, blue-collar voters.

The general election is a different story. Debbie Stabenow, the Democratic incumbent, is deeply entrenched after cruising to reelection by 15 points in 2006 and 20 points in 2012. She is affable, well-known and relatively popular around the state. She has more than $4 million in her campaign account, and won’t have to start spending much until after next August’s Republican primary. She is hands-down the Democratic Party’s best politician in Michigan. Stabenow will be very difficult to beat.

But this, perhaps more than anything else, makes the case for Kid Rock: Stabenow has devoured her last two challengers and will almost certainly make it three in a row if Republicans run another traditional campaign. Enter the self-described American Bad Ass. “Some Democrats in D.C. are freaking out because he would scramble the playbook,” says Democratic strategist Joshua Pugh, who has worked numerous Michigan campaigns and was formerly the state party’s communications director. “It would scramble the playbook. But I’m still not concerned if I’m Debbie Stabenow.”

Running for Senate, especially for someone brand new to politics, can be a logistical nightmare: deadlines, disclosure forms, vendor contracts, legal fees, campaign finance regulations. Some Democrats are convinced Ritchie won’t follow through—not because he doesn’t want to, but because he’s touring through November and conventional wisdom says a viable candidate can’t wait that long to get a campaign off the ground. “There’s a wide gulf between qualifying for the ballot and spending your summer greeting voters all across the state while you’re leaving cash on the table all across the country,” says Joe Disano, a Democratic strategist in Michigan. “Campaigning time overlaps very much with the summer touring season.”

And yet others, in private conversations, are clearly anxious. Kid Rock doesn’t need to run a standard campaign; he has nearly universal name-identification that will earn him free media to make up for any lack of traditional ground game. (Sound familiar?) If he runs, some Democrats fear, not only could Ritchie chip away at Stabenow’s impressive coalition of rural, non-college-educated independents and urban, union-friendly Democrats; he alone might prove capable of mobilizing Republicans who otherwise don’t turn out to vote in midterm elections.

“The fact that he’s non-traditional is appealing to a lot of people. Obviously it scares others who want someone more predictable,” says Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan GOP. “But if you’re going to beat an entrenched candidate like Debbie Stabenow in a purple state, you need to do something different.”

“He’s well-liked in Michigan. He’s a hometown darling. He’s got deep connections to Detroit. He’s done a lot throughout the state,” Anuzis adds. “Anybody who’s writing him off is making a mistake.”

***

Kid Rock comes from a prideful place. The Motor City. The arsenal of democracy. Motown. Aretha. Seger. Stevie. Eminem. Joe Louis. Hockeytown. The Bad Boys. Detroit’s popular image—grit, swagger, resilience—and the identity derived from it so permeate the region and much of the rest of the state that even those who do not hail from inside the city limits claim a sort of honorary citizenship. It’s how Bobby Ritchie, born into considerable wealth and raised in Macomb County, came to be viewed as a champion for Detroit and therefore a representative of Michigan writ large.

When Ritchie was born there in 1971, Macomb was in the middle of a great tidal shift. Over the previous decade, the county’s population had swelled by 54 percent due to white flight from Detroit, which sits just south of the county on the other side of 8 Mile Road. The new residents, like the old ones, were overwhelmingly white. They were blue-collar workers, many of whom owed allegiance to one of the “Big Three” automakers. They were Democrats and proudly so, this being Macomb, which as recently as 1960 had been the most heavily Democratic suburban county in America. But a transformation was underway, thanks to a combination of the Democratic Party lurching left on cultural issues, backlash over cross-district busing and the rise of racially tinged fears of worsening crime in inner-city Detroit. By 1980, when Ronald Reagan won his first term as president, Macomb was the most Republican suburban county in America.

It was in this Macomb County that young Bobby Ritchie grew up—and where his Senate candidacy would be anchored. Macomb, birthplace to the fabled “Reagan Democrats” of the 1980s, is undergoing another transformation as the population becomes better educated and more diverse, yet it remains home to an outsize number of working-class, culturally conservative voters who are motivated to vote Republican under the right circumstances. (Romney lost Macomb by 4 points in 2012; Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 12 points in the county after winning an eye-popping 48 percent of the vote there during the Republican primary.) Macomb, as well as economically similar swaths of the Interstate 75 corridor—Genesee County, Saginaw County, Bay County, all the way north to the Upper Peninsula—would be Kid Rock Country in a GOP primary, some doubling as decisive battlegrounds in the general election.

If that’s an oversimplification of his appeal, it’s one the musician has played into. Kid Rock’s public persona has been, at different points in his career, that of the chill country boy, the trailer park hoodlum and the street-prowling pimp. But Ritchie’s childhood was one of comfortable plenty. He grew up in Romeo, a small town in Macomb’s rural northwest corner—roughly 24 miles from Detroit’s outermost city limits—best known for its apple orchards and annual peach festival. His father, Bill Ritchie, owned Crest Lincoln Mercury, a successful car dealership in nearby Sterling Heights, and, for a time, served as head of the powerful Detroit Automobile Dealers Association. His mother, Susan, raised the couple’s four children (Bobby was No. 3). The family lived in an immense, 18-room, 5,628-square-foot estate with a five-car garage, three-horse barn, in-ground swimming pool and private tennis court. The Ritchies were known for their raging barn parties, blasting the heartland rock of Bob Seger late into the night.

Yet it was here—ensconced in 97-plus-percent-white Macomb, in a world of privilege and opportunity—that Robert Ritchie fell in love with rap music.

During the late ’80s, Ritchie would drive down to Mt. Clemens—one of Macomb’s only cities with buildings more than a few stories tall, a viable downtown and a black population—or further south to Detroit for basement parties in a rap scene that was literally underground. He was enamored of the DJs and soon became one himself, buying the turntables and speakers with $700 loaned from his parents and money he earned by picking apples.

In the mostly black, mostly urban rap scene of Metro Detroit, Ritchie stood out—his stage name, famously, came from surprised partygoers: ‘Look at that white kid rock.’ His legend grew as he took to rapping, earning late-night airplay in the Detroit radio market with his 1990 breakout hit, “Wax the Booty,” a paean to doggy-style sex. “In conversation, Romeo’s Bob Ritchie is pleasant, bright and insightful,” wrote Detroit Free Press music reporter Gary Graff in February 1991. “As Kid Rock, however, he poses as a foul-mouthed delinquent with a sexual fixation.”

This quarter-century-old observation splendidly captures the dueling personas of Ritchie and Rock. Throughout his rise to superstardom—on the success of head-banging singles like “Bawitdaba” and debauchery-drenched tracks such as “Cowboy” and “Welcome 2 the Party”—observers have expressed surprise, even bewilderment, at discovering an intelligent, articulate, charismatic and even introspective person in real life. At the end of a fascinating 50-minute interview with Dan Rather earlier this year, the former CBS anchor studied Ritchie and told him, “Despite how you present yourself sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly, you run deep, hoss.”

Kid Rock’s stylings have evolved in recent years, his biggest hits being family-friendly singles such as “Born Free” and “All Summer Long.” Some of that owes to maturity and growing older—as does his giving up hard drugs, he told Rather. And yet Ritchie’s continued commercial success reflects the chameleon-like ease with which he has always fit into his surroundings. He hasn’t so much reinvented himself as proved to be totally malleable while maintaining his musical credibility. He was a rapper in the age of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, and a country rocker who dueted with Sheryl Crow on “Picture,” one of country’s classic torch songs. He embraced metal rap during the short-lived reign of groups like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, and later he went all-in on Southern rock, shamelessly lifting the most memorable riffs by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Warren Zevon and transplanting their melodies to summertime Michigan. Lately, he’s been a sort of walking homage to the Midwestern anthems of Seger, a fellow metro Detroiter. The same man who rapped with Snoop dueted with Hank Williams Jr. He performed in front of a Confederate flag for years before winning an award from the Detroit chapter of the NAACP, the organization’s largest branch in the nation. (After receiving the group’s recognition, the Free Press reported in 2015, Kid Rock ditched the flag.)

Through it all, he came across as utterly authentic even as he was constantly redefining himself.

In Michigan, that’s a central part of his appeal. He’s the hometown celebrity who didn’t leave, even as the economy tanked and the population plummeted statewide. He’s grafted Detroit’s identity onto his own (“We spend our days on the line and our nights in the bars,” sings the millionaire’s son). Where other artists might attract cynicism for hawking $25 T-shirts with a trademarked “Made in Detroit” logo or selling a Michigan-brewed “Badass American Lager,” Kid Rock seems to have earned the benefit of the doubt.

Ritchie gives back to the country: Performances for the troops overseas, on top of his donations to numerous military charities and home-building efforts for a wounded veteran, earned him the “Patriot Award” from Operation Troop Aid in 2014. He is similarly generous in the community—his foundation has given money to, among other groups, a local youth theater, a nature conservancy and the Detroit Historical Museum (where an exhibit is named in his honor). And unlike other beloved local figures—most especially Eminem—he’s highly accessible. Everyone seems to know somebody who met him at a bar or ran into him on the lake or got invited back to his house to hang out. (A Rolling Stone piece from 2015 detailed how Ritchie, while at his property in Alabama, invites over small-town neighbors he meets under various circumstances; he even took three of them to New York City as his “security entourage” so they could see the Big Apple for the first time.) On a random evening in Michigan, locals know you can find Ritchie chatting up guests at unremarkable watering holes in Mt. Clemens or St. Clair Shores, taking in a Tigers game at Comerica Park or even golfing alongside wealthy white-collar executives at Metro Detroit’s most selective country clubs.

In a region long divided along lines of race and class, Ritchie’s equally at home among black Detroiters and the suburban and exurban whites of the surrounding counties. Doubtless this is informed by his own family: Ritchie has a college-aged biracial son, whom he raised as a single father after winning a custody battle in court. Yet in song, Ritchie has also described himself as “a lowlife” who thinks “racist jokes are funny” and questioned in “Amen,” a track on his 2007 album, “How can we seek salvation when our nation’s race relations got me feeling guilty of being white?”

These contradictions and complexities make for an intriguing artist. They represent liabilities for an aspiring politician.

***

If Ritchie runs, the urgent question will be how he addresses—if at all—his decades’ worth of controversies. For all the excitement generated by his potential candidacy, Republicans cringe knowing it could derail not just his campaign but those of GOP rivals caught up in what could become a circus-like primary. “It’s a legitimate concern. I would see that as Kid Rock's weakness,” says Wes Nakagiri, a Michigan tea-party activist who first floated the idea of a Ritchie candidacy at this year’s state GOP convention. Nakagiri loves the idea of Kid Rock running as an “outside the box” populist who supports the president, but wonders whether the musician can get away with what Trump did. “How do voters view those things?” he asks. “Do they look past it like they did with Trump?”

If they do, Ritchie will have to reconcile the many versions of himself and find a coherent message. When it comes to social issues, for example, Kid Rock showed his libertarian streak with the comment to the New Yorker about same-sex marriage, and said of Republicans in that same interview, “I think they go too far with some of that pro-life stuff. I just want some nerds watching my money.” However, the singer grabbed headlines—and won plaudits from conservative groups—back in 2000 when he released the song “Abortion,” which tells of a father grieving to the point of contemplating suicide after his unborn child is aborted.

More vulnerabilities will surface as opponents wade through Ritchie’s finances, family life and personal records searching for ways to discredit him. Within a week of his exploratory tweet, the libertarian-leaning Mackinac Center think tank reported that Kid Rock’s brewing company was awarded $723,000 in state incentives in 2009—one year before he released the song “Flyin’ High,” in which he sang, “I ain’t never had to take a handout.” Trivial? Sure. But it’s an example of how granular the dumpster-diving will get. The simple fact that Ritchie has owned homes in at least five states (Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, California, Florida) is certain to produce discomforting legal disclosures.

Perhaps the greatest challenge will be deciding whether he wants to be Kid Rock or Bobby Ritchie—not for purposes of ballot identification or campaign literature, but rather, the persona he wants to present voters. In the heat of the 2012 election, Ritchie preached the value of bipartisanship by recording—at his own expense—a purposely corny PSA with liberal actor Sean Penn. “There’s nothing wrong with standing up for what you believe in and having an honest conversation with people,” Ritchie told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly in a June 2013 interview. “Sean Penn, he’s a good friend of mine, and we go at it toe to toe all the time, but you know what? We have great conversations, and we have a better understanding of some things, and I think if more people could just have that dialogue—if everybody would just calm down, all right?”

Kid Rock’s Political Merchandise Images from two of the T-shirts available at the performer’s online store. | KidRock.com

But that inclusive, kumbaya vibe has vanished in the Trump era. Shortly after the 2016 election ended, Kid Rock’s online store began selling tawdry pro-Trump merchandise. One T-shirt showed the electoral map with a key: red states = United States of America; blue states = “Dumbfuckistan.” Another showed a smiling Trump above the words “_onald Trump. The ‘D’ is missing because it’s in every hater’s mouth.”

If Kid Rock’s popularity owes to his ability to straddle cultural fault lines and give everyone a little bit of what they want—rap, rock, country, blues and sometimes all of the above—running for Senate might force him to choose sides in a way that endorsing Romney or Trump never did. That, more than the logistical hurdles or financial sacrifices associated with running for office, might prove a deterrent for the musician who has excelled at being everything to everyone.

If it does not, Kid Rock’s candidacy for U.S. Senate will be the manifestation of the left’s nightmare about what Trump’s election has wrought—and a fulfillment of unwitting attempts at humor. When Zach Galifianakis interviewed Hillary Clinton on “Between Two Ferns” during the 2016 campaign, he asked, “When [Trump] is elected president and Kid Rock becomes secretary of state, are you going to move to Canada?” If that feels eerie, consider that in the music video for his 2001 single “You Never Met a Motherfucker Quite Like Me,” Ritchie opens a newspaper with an all-caps front-page headline: “KID ROCK NEGOTIATES PEACE AGREEMENT.” He then tosses the paper aside with a smirk on his face.

Nobody should be laughing now.

 

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"Republicans are in full control of government — but losing control of their party'

Spoiler

Six months after seizing complete control of the federal government, the Republican Party stands divided as ever — plunged into a messy war among its factions that has escalated in recent weeks to crisis levels.

Frustrated lawmakers are increasingly sounding off at a White House awash in turmoil and struggling to accomplish its legislative goals. President Trump is scolding Republican senators over health care and even threatening electoral retribution. Congressional leaders are losing the confidence of their rank and file. And some major GOP donors are considering using their wealth to try to force out recalcitrant incumbents.

“It’s a lot of tribes within one party, with many agendas, trying to do what they want to do,” Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) said in an interview.

The intensifying fights threaten to derail efforts to overhaul the nation’s tax laws and other initiatives that GOP leaders hope will put them back on track. The party remains bogged down by a months-long health-care endeavor that still lacks the support to become law, although Senate GOP leaders plan to vote on it this week.

With his priorities stalled and Trump consumed by staff changes and investigations into Russian interference in last year’s election, Republicans are adding fuel to a political fire that is showing no signs of burning out. The conflict also heralds a potentially messy 2018 midterm campaign with fierce intra-party clashes that could draw resources away from fending off Democrats.

“It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President,” Trump wrote on Twitter Sunday afternoon, marking the latest sign of the president’s uneasy relationship with his own party.

Winning control of both chambers and the White House has done little to fill in the deep and politically damaging ideological fault lines that plagued the GOP during Barack Obama’s presidency and ripped the party apart during the 2016 presidential primary. Now, Republicans have even more to lose.

“In the 50 years I’ve been involved, Republicans have yet to figure out how to support each other,” said R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the founder of the American Spectator, a conservative magazine.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans are increasingly concerned that Trump has shown no signs of being able to calm the party. What Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) called the “daily drama” at the White House flared again last week when Trump shook up his communications staff and told the New York Times that he regretted picking Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general.

“This week was supposed to be ‘Made in America Week’ and we were talking about Attorney General Jeff Sessions,” Dent grumbled in a telephone interview Thursday, citing White House messaging campaigns that were overshadowed by the controversies.

As Trump dealt with continued conflicts among his staff — which culminated Friday in press secretary Sean Spicer resigning in protest after wealthy financier Anthony Scaramucci was named communications director — he set out to try to resolve the Senate Republican impasse over health care.

The president had a small group of Republican senators over for dinner last Monday night to talk about the issue. But the discussion veered to other subjects, including Trump’s trip to Paris and the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for most legislation, which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will not end. That didn’t stop Trump from wondering aloud about its usefulness.

“He asked the question, ‘Why should we keep it’?” recalled Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who attended the dinner.

Two days later, some Republican senators left a White House lunch confused about what Trump was asking them to do on health care. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the next day that while the president “made very clear” that “he wants to see a bill pass, I’m unclear, having heard the president and read his tweets, exactly which bill he wants to pass.”

The White House says the president prefers to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. McConnell has also raised the prospect of moving to only repeal the law. Neither option has enough votes. Nevertheless, McConnell plans to hold a vote early this week and bring the push to fulfill a seven-year campaign promise to its conclusion, one way or the other.

“One of the things that united our party has been the pledge to repeal Obamacare since the 2010 election cycle,” said White House legislative affairs director Marc Short. “So when we complete that, I think that will help to unite” the party.

Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have described the dynamic between the White House and GOP lawmakers as a “disconnect” between Republicans who are still finding it difficult to accept that he is the leader of the party that they have long controlled.

“The disconnect is between a president who was elected from outside the Washington bubble and people in Congress who are of the Washington bubble,” said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), who works closely with the White House. “I don’t think some people in the Senate understand the mandate that Donald Trump’s election represented.”

Trump issued a casual threat at the Wednesday lunch against Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who has not embraced McConnell’s health-care bill. “Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn’t he?” Trump said in front of a pack of reporters as Heller, sitting directly to his right, grinned through the uncomfortable moment.

Heller is up for reelection in a state that Trump lost to Hillary Clinton and where Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) was the first Republican to expanded Medicaid under the ACA. Heller later brushed the moment off as “President Trump being President Trump.”

But some donors say they are weighing whether to financially back primary challengers against Republican lawmakers unwilling to support Trump’s aims.

“Absolutely we should be thinking about that,” said Frank VanderSloot, a billionaire chief executive of an Idaho nutritional-supplement company. He bemoaned the “lack of courage” some lawmakers have shown and wished representatives would “have the guts” to vote the way they said they would on the campaign trail.

It’s not just the gulf between Trump and Republican senators that has strained relations during the health-care debate. The way McConnell and his top deputies have handled the legislation has drawn sharp criticism from some GOP senators.

“No,” said Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), when asked last week whether he was happy with the way leadership has navigated the talks.

As he stepped into a Senate office building elevator the same day, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) would not respond to reporter questions about how good a job McConnell has done managing the health-care push. He flashed a smile as the door closed.

McConnell has defended his strategy, saying the process has been open to Republican senators, who have discussed it in many lunches and smaller meetings. Still, when it came time to write the bill, it was only McConnell and a small group of aides who did it. There was no outreach at all to Democrats, who have been united in their opposition.

In the House, the prospect of passing a 2018 budget this summer and a spending bill with funding for the Mexican border wall that Trump has called for remain uncertain, even though Republicans have a sizeable majority in the chamber. GOP disagreements have continued to erupt during Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s (R-Wis.) tenure. There are also obstacles in both chambers to achieving tax reform, which is expected to be among the next significant GOP legislative undertakings.

Trump critics said the ongoing controversies over Russian interference in the 2016 election and probes into potential coordination with the president’s associates would make any improvement in relations all but impossible in the coming months, with many Republicans unsure whether Trump’s presidency will survive.

“The Russia stories never stop coming,” said Rick Wilson, a vocal anti-Trump consultant and GOP operative. “For Republicans, the stories never get better, either. There is no moment of clarity or admission.”

Wilson said Republicans are also starting to doubt whether “the bargain they made — that they can endure Trump in order to pass X or Y” — can hold. “After a while, nothing really works and it becomes a train wreck.”

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump associate, said Trump’s battles with Republicans are unlikely to end and are entirely predictable, based on what Trump’s victory signified.

“His nomination and election were a hostile takeover of the vehicle of the Republican Party,” Stone said. He added, “When you talk to some Republicans who oppose Trump, they say they will keep opposing him but can’t openly say it.”

Some Republican lawmakers have been pained to talk about the president publicly, fearful of aggressively challenging their party leader but also wary of aligning too closely with some of his controversial statements or policy positions. Instead, they often attempt to focus on areas where they agree.

“On foreign policy, I think he very much is involved in a direction that’s far more in alignment since he’s been elected with a bulk of the United States Senate than during the campaign,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Amid the discord, there are some signs of collaboration. The Republican National Committee has worked to build ties to Trump and his family. In recent weeks, Trump’s son Eric, his wife, Lara, and RNC chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, among other committee officials, met at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to discuss upcoming races and strategy.

That meeting followed a similar gathering weeks earlier at the RNC where Trump family members were welcomed to share their suggestions, according two people familiar with the sessions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Yet the friction keeps building. Among Trump’s defenders, such as VanderSloot, who said the president is “trying to move the ball forward,” there are concerns he is picking too many fights with too many people. “I think he’s trying to swat too many flies,” VanderSloot said.

The broader burden, some Republicans say, is to overcome a dynamic of disunity in the party that predates Trump and the current Congress. During the Obama years, it took the form of tea party-vs.-establishment struggles, which in some cases cost Republicans seats or led them to wage risky political feuds.

“There was a separation between Republicanism and conservatism long before he won the White House,” said former Republican National Committee

Yeah, they were already awful, then the orange menace took over, making them even worse.

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4 hours ago, nvmbr02 said:

I don't want to look at all the bullshit to dig it up but there was a general statement wishing McCain well from TT and Melania from the White House. It sounded like an aide wrote it. 

No doubt.

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The WaPo published a piece by Nancy Pelosi: "Americans deserve better than the GOP agenda, so we’re offering a better deal"

Spoiler

Last week, our nation marked six months since President Trump’s inauguration.

For the first time in a decade, the GOP had the White House, Congress and complete control of the legislative process to advance its agenda. But instead of creating good-paying jobs, or rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, or advancing tax reform, Republicans have spent six months trying to raise Americans’ health costs to fund tax breaks for billionaires.

Democrats have a better approach — in fact, a better deal. On Monday, House and Senate Democrats are traveling to the town of Berryville, Va., to announce a fresh vision for “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future.”

What motivates us is that the costs of living keep rising, but families feel their incomes and wages aren’t keeping up. Special interests are given special treatment, while hard-working Americans are ignored. Working people from the heartland to the cities are struggling in a rigged economy and a system stacked against them.

Our agenda is focused on efforts to create jobs and raise incomes for American workers, to lower the cost of living for American families, and to build an economy that gives every American the tools to succeed in the 21st century.

It is an ambitious economic agenda that represents a renewed Democratic commitment to the hard-working men and women across the United States who have been left out and left behind for too long. As part of that commitment, Democrats are announcing three new proposals rooted in a bold approach to the challenges facing the United States.

First, Democrats are pledging ourselves to the goal of creating good-paying, full-time jobs for 10 million more Americans in the next five years.

It is time to ignite a new era of investment in America’s workers, empowering all Americans with the skills they need to compete in the modern economy. We are calling for a new tax credit for employers to train and hire workers at a good wage, and a massive new national commitment to expanding apprenticeships and paid on-the-job training that advances their skills and careers.

While we grow jobs, wages and the economy, Democrats know that a better deal for the American people demands strong action to tackle rising costs that are eating up families’ budgets.

Prescription drug prices are jacked up, and Americans have fewer options at increased costs. Large communications companies merge, and families see fewer options and higher bills. Agriculture giants consolidate, while farmers struggle and prices in Americans’ shopping carts rise. The price of gas goes down, but plane tickets become more expensive and airlines keep adding fees.

With this agenda, Democrats pledge ourselves to breaking the grip of the special interests and confronting the rising everyday costs that families have endured for too long.

That is the impetus behind our second proposal, to put economic power back into the hands of the American people, cracking down on the monopolies and big corporate mergers that harm consumers, workers and competition. We will demand that proposed mergers meet tough new standards to protect competition before approval, and will institute post-merger reviews to ensure that consolidated companies keep their promises to American consumers.

Third, Democrats will take unprecedented aggressive action to lower the cost of prescription drugs — the single largest factor driving increasing health costs in the United States today. We will leverage the power of Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, force drug manufacturers to open their books and justify cost increases, and create a strong, independent enforcement agency empowered to end outrageous and unjustified prescription drug price-gouging.

The past six months have exposed the toxic special-interest priorities at the core of the Republican agenda. The American people deserve better. With a Democratic Congress, a better deal is exactly what Democrats will give them.

I will be interested to hear specifics about what actions will be taken to achieve this agenda.

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"Senate Republicans take cynicism to a horrifying new level"

Spoiler

We are hurtling toward a health-care disaster in the next 36 hours or so, for the worst possible reason. Cynicism is seldom completely absent from the operation of politics, but this is truly a unique situation. Republicans are set to remake one-sixth of the American economy, threaten the economic and health security of every one of us and deprive tens of millions of people of health-care coverage, all with a bill they haven’t seen, couldn’t explain and don’t even bother to defend on its merits.

Why? Because they made a promise to their base and now they say they have to keep it — regardless of what form keeping the promise might take and how much misery it might cause.

Tomorrow, the Senate is set to vote on a Republican bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. What Republican bill? The senators themselves don’t even know. Here’s how Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) described it yesterday on “Face the Nation“:

It appears that we will have a vote on Tuesday. But we don’t whether we’re going to be voting on the House bill, the first version of the Senate bill, the second version of the Senate bill, a new version of the Senate bill, or a 2015 bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act now, and then said that somehow we will figure out a replacement over the next two years.

I’ve often argued that Republicans in Congress aren’t serious about policy, but this is taking their unseriousness to the level of farce. After complaining for years that the ACA was “rammed through” Congress — in a process that involved a full year of debate, dozens of hearings in both houses and 188 Republican amendments to the bill debated and accepted — they’re going to vote on a sweeping bill that had zero hearings and that they saw only hours before, because who cares what’s in it? It’s only the fate of the country at stake. If taking away health-care coverage from 20 million or 30 million Americans is what it takes to stave off a primary challenge from some nutball tea partier, then that’s what they’ll do.

No one would argue that keeping promises isn’t important. But Republicans have elevated the idea of keeping their promise to repeal the ACA to the point where it’s drained of all substance. You can see it in the way they talk about the various iterations of their bill. You seldom hear a Republican defend it on the terms of the bill itself. They don’t say, “Here’s how this bill will bring down deductibles” or “Here’s how the bill will take care of those who lose their insurance” or “Here’s how the bill will lower costs.” That’s partly because their bills won’t do any of those things, but mostly because they just don’t care.

Instead, what they say is, “We made a promise, and we’re going to keep it.” If Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) handed them a bill saying that all children on Medicaid would be taken to the desert, buried up to their necks in the sand, and covered in fire ants, at least 40 of them would say, “It may not be perfect, but we have to keep the promise we made to repeal Obamacare, so I’m voting yes.”

For those few Republican senators with a hint of conscience — or whose states are particularly reliant on the ACA, and on Medicaid in particular — McConnell is trying to hand them a fig leaf they can use to justify their votes. But the goodies he’s offering are laughable. Consider, for instance, that McConnell is telling senators that he’ll put in $200 billion to help states that didn’t expand Medicaid. Sounds generous, until you realize that’s on top of over $750 billion in Medicaid cuts. It’s like saying, “I’m stealing your car, but here, you can keep the spare tire.”

The same is true of the $45 billion over a decade they’re tossing in to address the opioid crisis. Many of the states hardest hit by that crisis are ones such as Ohio and West Virginia that are most dependent on Medicaid. So for them, the Republican bill would take $15 or $20 away from the program most central to treating the addicts in their state, but toss a dollar back to make up for it. People who work with state budgets and addiction treatment have been telling anyone who’ll listen that given the magnitude of this crisis, $4.5 billion a year is a joke. But it might be enough to allow a couple of Republicans in the Senate to claim they aren’t making the problem dramatically worse, which is exactly what they’d be doing.

What you’d expect of leaders is to say, “Okay, there are a bunch of interlocking, complex problems we want to solve here. This has to be done carefully. Let’s take our time and make sure we get it right.” But that’s not what Republicans are saying. Instead, they’re saying “We have to vote on a bill now, even if we don’t know what it’s in it and even if it makes the problems we claim to care about impossibly worse, so we can say that we repealed Obamacare.” Sure, it would be bad to kick 20 million or 30 million people off their coverage — but not as bad as having to admit they failed to pass a bill!

This is even less serious and more cynical than what they’ve been doing for the past seven years. When they held dozens of votes in the House to repeal the ACA, it may have been silly, but at least it didn’t hurt anyone. Now they have the power to affect people’s lives by the millions — even destroy them — and they can’t be bothered to spend more than a day or two figuring out how to do it.

I like the "I'm stealing your car, but here, you can keep the spare tire" comparison.

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Oh, for pity sake. They're dragging McCain back tomorrow: "McCain’s return to Senate injects momentum into GOP health-care battle"

Spoiler

The Senate plans to vote Tuesday to try to advance a sweeping rewrite of the nation’s health-care laws with the last-minute arrival of Arizona Sen. John McCain (R), who could provide the critical vote to start debate on the bill even as he announced last week that he is suffering from brain cancer.

In a bit of drama, McCain said Monday night that he will return to the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to vote on whether to start debate on the health-care bill. The senator had been recuperating from surgery in Arizona.

“Senator McCain looks forward to returning to the United States Senate tomorrow to continue working on important legislation, including health care reform, the National Defense Authorization Act, and new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea,” McCain’s office said in a statement.

It is unclear, however, if McCain’s return will improve Republicans’ prospects of passing a key procedural hurdle to move the health-care bill forward. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has insisted he intends to hold a vote to start debate on health care on Tuesday — even though it’s prospects are murky at best.

The news that McCain would return to Washington came after a day in which President Trump took to publicly calling out Republicans in Congress for failing to achieve the rollback of the Affordable Care Act — something that both he and the GOP congressional majority have long promised to do. As of Monday evening, Trump’s thinly veiled barbs at those in his party had done little to secure more support for passing a health-care measure.

Speaking at a White House event on Monday night, Trump threateningly urged Senate Republicans to vote “yes” on a procedural motion that would allow debate on health-care legislation to begin. However, exactly what legislation lawmakers would be debating remained unclear to many of them late Monday.

In a West Virginia speech before the National Boy Scout Jamboree, Trump sought to pressure Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) by saying, “You better get Senator Capito to vote for it,” referring to his health and human services secretary, Tom Price, who was with him. Trump also quipped that he would fire Price if he did not round up enough votes.

“As the Scout law says, a Scout is trustworthy, loyal — we could use some more loyalty, I can tell you that,” Trump said in a day that was filled with thinly veiled barbs at Republicans who have failed to advance the health-care revamp.

McCain’s dramatic return could inject some suspense into the procedural vote to open debate, which so far has failed to pick up strength — no matter which version is considered.

Revered on both sides of the aisle, the news that McCain has brain cancer cast a pall over the Capitol last week and his return is sure to provide a morale boost for colleagues in both parties.

But most immediately, McCain may provide a critical vote in support of beginning formal debate on the health-care bill. Republican leaders openly discussed the possibility of McCain’s return with reporters on Monday during an evening vote.

“I’m pretty confident we’ll get on the bill even without John, “ Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the chamber’s lead GOP vote-counter, told reporters.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), said she spoke with McCain on Saturday and that her frequent collaborator was eager to get back to work.

“It is just extraordinary how upbeat he is and how accepting of his diagnosis — it was truly inspirational to talk with him,” she said. “I have a feeling that if there’s any way he can be back, he will be here — whether his doctors like it. It just reminds me of what an extraordinarily brave person he is.”

Without McCain, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) could only have afforded one GOP defection. Multiple Republican senators have raised objections to each health-care proposal that has been offered, leaving McConnell and Trump in a very difficult spot.

“There is still time to do the right thing,” Trump said at the White House on Monday. He added a word of warning: “Any senator who votes against starting debate is telling Americans that you are fine with the Obamacare nightmare.”

Vice President Pence is also lobbying heavily for wary senators to pass a health-care overhaul and was spotted heading toward McConnell’s Capitol Hill office late Monday afternoon as votes were getting underway.

Some Republican senators expressed confidence in a newly emerging strategy of trying to pass smaller-scale changes to the Affordable Care Act, with an eye on trying to continue negotiations into the fall.

McConnell encouraged senators to vote Tuesday to open what he said would be a period of “robust debate” on health care. “I will vote ‘yes’ on the motion to proceed and I would urge all of our colleagues to do the same,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor.

But a flurry of problems remained for McConnell as he insisted on taking up the troubled legislation, which must receive 50 votes to be approved, with Pence ready to break a tie.

His plan is catching flak from all sides — ranging from moderate senators who disagree with the Medicaid cuts to conservatives who don’t believe the package goes far enough to repeal the ACA, which they have campaigned against for seven years.

After it became clear last week there weren’t sufficient votes for the Senate package to repeal and replace the ACA that McConnell negotiated, the majority leader said the Senate would instead move to a straight repeal bill like one they voted on in 2015.

But there was confusion Monday about exactly which direction senators would go on Tuesday when and if the voting starts. And none of the options that McConnell has presented had won enough public support to guarantee passage.

“What are we proceeding to?” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a conservative critic of the effort, wondered aloud to reporters.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she would not vote “yes” to move forward on any of the plans that have been floated so far.

One emerging idea late Monday was to scale down the scope of the proposals and instead find a narrower bill that every Senate Republican could support. That would set up a House-Senate conference to resolve the differences between the two proposals, buying Republicans more time to continue to try to find a broad bill that repeals and replaces the ACA.

Cornyn confirmed Monday evening that congressional leaders were now leaning against the original plan, if the Senate could approve legislation, to have the House immediately approve the Senate bill once it was approved in the upper chamber.

“Initially there was some thought maybe the House would take up the bill we passed, but that may not be the case. So what we need to do is make progress,” Cornyn told reporters.

That point — just “make progress” — was echoed by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who held a robust conversation with GOP leaders on the Senate floor during votes and explained that the aim is just to make sure some legislative proposal passes in a bid to keep the effort alive.

Officially, the Senate plans to vote on a motion to proceed to a House-passed repeal-and-replace bill. But from there, that measure could be amended in any number of ways.

In his remarks Monday, McConnell referred to the 2015 bill that passed with overwhelming GOP support but was vetoed by President Barack Obama.

McConnell said senators have another chance to vote for that measure, and this time “President Trump will use his pen to sign such legislation.”

The GOP leader did not mention the Senate bill to “repeal and replace” Obamacare simultaneously. Trump has pushed lawmakers not to give up on the simultaneous repeal-and-replace approach, leaving many scratching their heads about what direction McConnell would go should legislation advance to a full floor debate.

“We’ll have several amendments,” said McConnell spokesman Don Stewart. “Members are discussing timing.”

Cornyn said Monday that leaders hadn’t decided which version of the bill would come up if the motion to proceed succeeds — in part because they want to keep their options open.

“We’re trying to maximize the number of votes,” Cornyn told reporters. “What we’re trying to do is convince everybody that if they’d like to get a vote on their amendment, then they need to vote to proceed to the House bill.”

Cornyn also left open the possibility that McCain could return to Washington on Tuesday after undergoing preliminary treatment for his aggressive form of brain cancer.

“I know they were trying to get approval for his travel arrangements,” Cornyn said. “I personally volunteered to rent an RV and road-trip with him.”

Last week, McCain’s office said that the senator would consult with his doctors to determine when he would return. They did not provide a timeline on Monday.

Without McCain in the Senate, Republican have a narrow 51-48 advantage over Democrats. All Democrats plan to vote against the GOP health-care bill.

McConnell met with conservative activists Monday to discuss health care. Two attendees — Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of tea party Patriots and Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs at FreedomWorks — said they support the motion to proceed.

Martin said she hoped that “at the very least, at the end of this process” lawmakers could pass the 2015 repeal bill. Pye also voiced support for that measure.

But neither said they walked away from the meeting with a clear understanding of which amendments to the bill would be brought up in which order, if debate can even begin.

As McConnell was trying to quietly win over votes, Trump spent his day loudly trying to pressure wavering Republicans. He called Obamacare “death” during the White House event. And after introducing Price at the West Virginia stop, Trump ramped up the pressure on his Cabinet secretary.

“By the way, are you going to get the votes? You better get the votes. Otherwise, I’ll say, ‘Tom, you’re fired,’ ” he exclaimed.

The only thing that made me cheer was the though of Agent Orange firing Tom Price. Of course, I shudder to think of what lowlife billionaire he'd nominate as a replacement.

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I so hope one of these women pull off an upset and beat Brat: "‘It’s grilling time’: Five women line up to challenge Rep. Brat"

Spoiler

When Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) complained months ago that female constituents pressuring him to hold a town hall were “in my grill no matter where I go,” he didn’t know how prescient those words were.

Five women — and one man — are running for the Democratic nomination to challenge the two-term congressman from suburban Richmond next year. The group includes a former CIA operative, a civil attorney and a Marine turned commercial airline pilot.

Women, mostly Democrats, are entering House primary contests in record numbers in Virginia.

Many say they are running to channel their frustration with President Trump. Democratic organizations — long desperate for female candidates — are recruiting them aggressively.

For a Democratic Party riding high on activist fervor, even a long shot district like Brat’s, which has been in Republican hands since the early 1970s, seems within reach.

“When my heart was broken and our dreams were dashed on November 8, I wasn’t sure what lay ahead of us,” said Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Virginia Democrats. That feeling soon gave way to hope, she said. “The whole thing has been very exhilarating and exciting.”

Brat declined an interview for this article but through an aide dismissed the pack of Democrats vying for the chance to take him on as acolytes of the House minority leader.

“Dave is hard at work keeping his promises to pass positive, principled policies that put our country back on the right track,” his chief of staff, Mark Kelly, said in a statement. “Nancy Pelosi desperately wants another vote for her liberal agenda that puts more power in the hands of Washington. Dave looks forward to a debate of ideas about America’s future after the Democrats pick their liberal nominee next June.”

Democrats say their best chance to flip a House seat in Virginia is a district already represented by a woman who has at times distanced herself from Trump. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R), of Northern Virginia, has seven Democratic opponents, four of whom are women.

A Democratic woman is considering challenging Rep. Scott Taylor, a Republican freshman from Virginia Beach. And two Democratic women are competing to run against Rep. Rob Wittman, whose eastern Virginia district includes parts of Prince William and Fauquier counties.

There’s even a Democratic woman taking on Maryland’s only Republican representative in Congress, Rep. Andy Harris, who hails from the Eastern Shore.

The day after the election, phones started ringing at Emerge America, an organization Andrea Dew Steele created 15 years ago in California, to prepare women to run for office. Today there are programs in 20 states, with 10 more in the works.

“This is a completely different kind of experience to have so many women wanting to run like this,” Steele said. “Normally you have to recruit women heavily and convince them to step up and run.”

Women hold about 20 percent of the 535 seats in Congress; 21 in the Senate and 84 in the House, according to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.

Research shows women didn’t run for office previously because they were less likely to identify themselves as qualified — a point that has not changed — and they were less likely to receive encouragement or be recruited — a factor that is changing.

Since Election Day, Emily’s List, a national group that endorses women who favor abortion rights, has heard from 16,000 women interested in running for office at all levels of government, compared with the 920 women who reached out during the 2016 cycle.

Emily’s List is talking to more than 130 women who are either running or considering a bid in at least 80 House districts, spokeswoman Alexandra De Luca said.

Jennifer L. Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, said women are running because many Democrats believe they can take advantage of Trump’s low approval rating, win competitive open seats, or pick off Republicans whose association with Trump could make them vulnerable.

In the past several election cycles, 70 percent of women who have run for office were Democrats, she said.

Yet Lawless cautioned that a record number of women candidates won’t necessarily translate into a record number of women in office.

“The stars have to align pretty perfectly for Democrats,” she said.

Brat’s comments earlier this year encouraged online liberal groups and constituents, some armed with “It’s grilling time” signs, to lash out at him at a rowdy town hall in Blackstone in February. Yet privately, Democrats acknowledge he will be tough to beat.

Buoyed by a reputation as the economics professor who unseated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014, Brat entered Congress with a national profile and sailed to reelection two years later by double digits. Trump won his district by 6 points.

The primary race on the Democratic side will force candidates to spend money and resources while Brat keeps up his frequent TV appearances touting the causes of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus.

Abigail Spanberger, 37, has captured early attention with a compelling biography and a profile in Elle Magazine. A former CIA operations officer stationed around the world, she grew up in the district and returned three years ago to work in the private sector.

She wasn’t sure she’d run for office until the day of the health-care vote in the House when she heard from a friend whose daughter suffers from a genetic disorder.

The mother said the repeal of the Affordable Care Act would leave her worried not just about her daughter’s condition but also going bankrupt over medical bills.

Spanberger texted her husband, “I’m definitely running. This is it for me. This is my turning point,” she said.

Eileen Bedell, 44, ran against Brat last year and is the only Democrat with experience seeking public office. An attorney specializing in civil litigation, she grew up in Arlington and Fairfax and has lived in the district for about 20 years. Brat’s support for repeal of the Affordable Care Act and his embrace of Trump make him vulnerable, she said.

“I call him Trump-lite,” she said. “Dave is Trump before Trump was Trump in Virginia.”

Kim Gower, 54, left a consulting career to earn her doctorate from Virginia Commonwealth University and teaches at the University of Mary Washington. A Michigan native, she has lived in the district most of the past decade.

Helen Alli, 52, considers herself a community activist and has served on the Richmond Economic Development Authority. Alli, who has lived in Henrico for 30 years, said she served in the Army for four years and owns a weight-loss and hormone-therapy business.

Janelle Noble, 35, owns a small IT consulting firm. She has lived in Louisa for 1o years and said she would like to see more subsidies for farms. She favors a basic universal income modeled after an experiment in Finland.

The only male candidate in the race, Dan Ward, served two stints in the Marines, including three years with the State Department under Hillary Clinton. He retired in 2014, bought a small farm in Orange and returned to an earlier career flying for a commercial airline.

“Dave Brat represents the extreme right,” he said. “He’s on TV all the time saying some crazy stuff.”

In addition to Brat’s infamous “in my grill” comment, the congressman has raised the ire of Democrats for defending Trump and accuses reporters of perpetuating “fake news.”

Brat’s Twitter and Instagram accounts recently posted a photo of the smiling congressman standing beside a man holding a sign that read “Hillary for U.S. ambassador to Libya.”

The photo, taken at a July 1 gun show in Fredericksburg, was quickly deleted because “it was being misinterpreted. Goal here is informing/sharing, not inflaming. Happy 4th,” according to a tweet Brat posted that evening.

He has positioned himself as a foil to Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who is leading a Trump investigation as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who suggested Trump’s son committed treason.

“Mark Warner is seeing smoke everywhere he goes, like he’s in a Cheech and Chong movie,” Brat said on CNN last week. “And Kaine now thinks the son is worse than Benedict Arnold. We’ve gotten a little hysterical.”

Asked how a Democrat who has never held political office could emerge from a six-way nomination fight to topple a telegenic congressman with national notoriety, Democrats noted that stranger things have happened.

“Look, nobody thought Dave Brat was going to upset Eric Cantor,” said Swecker, the state Democrats chairwoman. “That was the upset of the century until now.”

Oh, I'd love to see his smug ass out of a job.

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I love Ted Lieu: "Dem amendments target Kushner, Trump businesses"

Spoiler

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) introduced two amendments Monday that put focus on President Trump’s family and businesses, including one that would strip funding from senior White House adviser Jared Kushner’s office.

The first amendment to the Make America Safe Appropriations Act for Fiscal 2018 would block anyone who has resubmitted a SF-86 security clearance form more than twice to add previously undisclosed contact with Russian officials from receiving a salary or the expenses for an office space or support staff. Such a person would also not be able to receive classified information.

The amendment is clearly aimed at Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, who has updated his security clearance form multiple times since taking a position in the White House, including one update that featured more than 100 contacts with foreign officials.

Kushner blamed an assistant during remarks to congressional investigators on Monday for prematurely submitting the form, saying there was miscommunication as he transitioned from his real estate business to the White House.

"Despite repeatedly lying about his meetings with the Russians, Jared Kushner continues to have access to classified information and an office in the West Wing," Lieu said in a press release

"Let us be clear: Any individual who committed the same act and was not related to the President would have been stripped of their security clearance and investigated. If the President wants to create special rules for his son-in-law, Congress must act instead by prohibiting him from receiving classified information and relieving taxpayers from paying his expenses.”

The second amendment is the same one Lieu offered to the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) earlier this month, blocking defense funds from being used to “conduct business, including the purchase of hotel rooms or conference space, with any entity owned by or significantly controlled by the President or a member of the President’s immediate family.”

Lieu has repeatedly called for Kushner to be stripped of his security clearance. He said Sunday that Kushner should be investigated for his “lies” on the form and that “his security clearance needs to be revoked immediately.”

I know they won't pass, thanks to Repugs being in charge, but Ted is doing the right thing.

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So disgusting that McCain is coming back for this. It obviously means he's voting for the repeal. You would think he would have grown a heart.

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2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I so hope one of these women pull off an upset and beat Brat: "‘It’s grilling time’: Five women line up to challenge Rep. Brat"

  Hide contents

When Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.) complained months ago that female constituents pressuring him to hold a town hall were “in my grill no matter where I go,” he didn’t know how prescient those words were.

Five women — and one man — are running for the Democratic nomination to challenge the two-term congressman from suburban Richmond next year. The group includes a former CIA operative, a civil attorney and a Marine turned commercial airline pilot.

Women, mostly Democrats, are entering House primary contests in record numbers in Virginia.

Many say they are running to channel their frustration with President Trump. Democratic organizations — long desperate for female candidates — are recruiting them aggressively.

For a Democratic Party riding high on activist fervor, even a long shot district like Brat’s, which has been in Republican hands since the early 1970s, seems within reach.

“When my heart was broken and our dreams were dashed on November 8, I wasn’t sure what lay ahead of us,” said Susan Swecker, chairwoman of the Virginia Democrats. That feeling soon gave way to hope, she said. “The whole thing has been very exhilarating and exciting.”

Brat declined an interview for this article but through an aide dismissed the pack of Democrats vying for the chance to take him on as acolytes of the House minority leader.

“Dave is hard at work keeping his promises to pass positive, principled policies that put our country back on the right track,” his chief of staff, Mark Kelly, said in a statement. “Nancy Pelosi desperately wants another vote for her liberal agenda that puts more power in the hands of Washington. Dave looks forward to a debate of ideas about America’s future after the Democrats pick their liberal nominee next June.”

Democrats say their best chance to flip a House seat in Virginia is a district already represented by a woman who has at times distanced herself from Trump. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R), of Northern Virginia, has seven Democratic opponents, four of whom are women.

A Democratic woman is considering challenging Rep. Scott Taylor, a Republican freshman from Virginia Beach. And two Democratic women are competing to run against Rep. Rob Wittman, whose eastern Virginia district includes parts of Prince William and Fauquier counties.

There’s even a Democratic woman taking on Maryland’s only Republican representative in Congress, Rep. Andy Harris, who hails from the Eastern Shore.

The day after the election, phones started ringing at Emerge America, an organization Andrea Dew Steele created 15 years ago in California, to prepare women to run for office. Today there are programs in 20 states, with 10 more in the works.

“This is a completely different kind of experience to have so many women wanting to run like this,” Steele said. “Normally you have to recruit women heavily and convince them to step up and run.”

Women hold about 20 percent of the 535 seats in Congress; 21 in the Senate and 84 in the House, according to the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.

Research shows women didn’t run for office previously because they were less likely to identify themselves as qualified — a point that has not changed — and they were less likely to receive encouragement or be recruited — a factor that is changing.

Since Election Day, Emily’s List, a national group that endorses women who favor abortion rights, has heard from 16,000 women interested in running for office at all levels of government, compared with the 920 women who reached out during the 2016 cycle.

Emily’s List is talking to more than 130 women who are either running or considering a bid in at least 80 House districts, spokeswoman Alexandra De Luca said.

Jennifer L. Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, said women are running because many Democrats believe they can take advantage of Trump’s low approval rating, win competitive open seats, or pick off Republicans whose association with Trump could make them vulnerable.

In the past several election cycles, 70 percent of women who have run for office were Democrats, she said.

Yet Lawless cautioned that a record number of women candidates won’t necessarily translate into a record number of women in office.

“The stars have to align pretty perfectly for Democrats,” she said.

Brat’s comments earlier this year encouraged online liberal groups and constituents, some armed with “It’s grilling time” signs, to lash out at him at a rowdy town hall in Blackstone in February. Yet privately, Democrats acknowledge he will be tough to beat.

Buoyed by a reputation as the economics professor who unseated House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014, Brat entered Congress with a national profile and sailed to reelection two years later by double digits. Trump won his district by 6 points.

The primary race on the Democratic side will force candidates to spend money and resources while Brat keeps up his frequent TV appearances touting the causes of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus.

Abigail Spanberger, 37, has captured early attention with a compelling biography and a profile in Elle Magazine. A former CIA operations officer stationed around the world, she grew up in the district and returned three years ago to work in the private sector.

She wasn’t sure she’d run for office until the day of the health-care vote in the House when she heard from a friend whose daughter suffers from a genetic disorder.

The mother said the repeal of the Affordable Care Act would leave her worried not just about her daughter’s condition but also going bankrupt over medical bills.

Spanberger texted her husband, “I’m definitely running. This is it for me. This is my turning point,” she said.

Eileen Bedell, 44, ran against Brat last year and is the only Democrat with experience seeking public office. An attorney specializing in civil litigation, she grew up in Arlington and Fairfax and has lived in the district for about 20 years. Brat’s support for repeal of the Affordable Care Act and his embrace of Trump make him vulnerable, she said.

“I call him Trump-lite,” she said. “Dave is Trump before Trump was Trump in Virginia.”

Kim Gower, 54, left a consulting career to earn her doctorate from Virginia Commonwealth University and teaches at the University of Mary Washington. A Michigan native, she has lived in the district most of the past decade.

Helen Alli, 52, considers herself a community activist and has served on the Richmond Economic Development Authority. Alli, who has lived in Henrico for 30 years, said she served in the Army for four years and owns a weight-loss and hormone-therapy business.

Janelle Noble, 35, owns a small IT consulting firm. She has lived in Louisa for 1o years and said she would like to see more subsidies for farms. She favors a basic universal income modeled after an experiment in Finland.

The only male candidate in the race, Dan Ward, served two stints in the Marines, including three years with the State Department under Hillary Clinton. He retired in 2014, bought a small farm in Orange and returned to an earlier career flying for a commercial airline.

“Dave Brat represents the extreme right,” he said. “He’s on TV all the time saying some crazy stuff.”

In addition to Brat’s infamous “in my grill” comment, the congressman has raised the ire of Democrats for defending Trump and accuses reporters of perpetuating “fake news.”

Brat’s Twitter and Instagram accounts recently posted a photo of the smiling congressman standing beside a man holding a sign that read “Hillary for U.S. ambassador to Libya.”

The photo, taken at a July 1 gun show in Fredericksburg, was quickly deleted because “it was being misinterpreted. Goal here is informing/sharing, not inflaming. Happy 4th,” according to a tweet Brat posted that evening.

He has positioned himself as a foil to Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), who is leading a Trump investigation as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who suggested Trump’s son committed treason.

“Mark Warner is seeing smoke everywhere he goes, like he’s in a Cheech and Chong movie,” Brat said on CNN last week. “And Kaine now thinks the son is worse than Benedict Arnold. We’ve gotten a little hysterical.”

Asked how a Democrat who has never held political office could emerge from a six-way nomination fight to topple a telegenic congressman with national notoriety, Democrats noted that stranger things have happened.

“Look, nobody thought Dave Brat was going to upset Eric Cantor,” said Swecker, the state Democrats chairwoman. “That was the upset of the century until now.”

Oh, I'd love to see his smug ass out of a job.

I have to admit that I had a silly, infantile reaction and giggled childishly when I read his last name.

'Brat' means 'fart' in Dutch. :pb_lol:

14 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

So disgusting that McCain is coming back for this. It obviously means he's voting for the repeal. You would think he would have grown a heart.

I'm not so sure. When the last attempt failed he immediately tweeted that it was time to get realistic and start working with Dems to fix the ACA. It could well be that he's one of the silent nay-sayers. Fingers crossed.

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4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

I have to admit that I had a silly, infantile reaction and giggled childishly when I read his last name.

'Brat' means 'fart' in Dutch. :pb_lol:

I'm not so sure. When the last attempt failed he immediately tweeted that it was time to get realistic and start working with Dems to fix the ACA. It could well be that he's one of the silent nay-sayers. Fingers crossed.

I have a hard time believing McConnell would go through the effort of dragging him back for a vote if he wasn't pretty damn certain McCain would vote for the repeal.  Otherwise, it would be more beneficial for McConnell if McCain stayed away.

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1 hour ago, Childless said:

I have a hard time believing McConnell would go through the effort of dragging him back for a vote if he wasn't pretty damn certain McCain would vote for the repeal.  Otherwise, it would be more beneficial for McConnell if McCain stayed away.

Is he being dragged back though? Or is he coming back of his own accord?

This tweet of his from last Thursday sounds like he's coming back because he chooses to do so, not because he's being dragged:

 

This is his official stance on healthcare:

Statement by senator John McCain on revised Senate Health Care Bill

Spoiler

Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) released the following statement today on the revised Senate health care bill:

“In its zeal for hard work, the Senate has completed another laborious week by passing a whopping total of three nominations. The Senate will now adjourn and senators will head home for a long weekend in our respective states, leaving Washington with no timetable for authorizing funding for our troops, no consensus on how to fund the government, no path forward on regular appropriations bills, and no plan to address the debt limit. And while we mull over another revision to the Senate health care bill, we still lack consensus on how to repeal and replace the failed policies of Obamacare, a law that is imploding in the State of Arizona as premiums skyrocket and insurers flee the marketplace. This is not what the American people expect of us, and it’s not what they deserve.

“The revised Senate health care bill released today does not include the measures I have been advocating for on behalf of the people of Arizona. That’s why if the Senate takes up this legislation, I intend to file amendments that would address the concerns raised by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and other leaders across our state about the bill’s impact on Arizona’s Medicaid system. Arizona has been nationally recognized for running one of the most efficient and cost-effective Medicaid programs in the country. This legislation should reward states like Arizona that are responsibly managing their health care services and controlling costs – not penalize them.

“Have no doubt: Congress must replace Obamacare, which has hit Arizonans with some of the highest premium increases in the nation and left 14 of Arizona’s 15 counties with only one provider option on the exchanges this year. But if we are not able to reach a consensus, the Senate should return to regular order, hold hearings and receive input from senators of both parties, and produce a bill that finally provides Americans with access to affordable and quality health care.”

If the Senate proceeds to the revised health care bill, Senator McCain plans to file amendments that would ensure Arizona is not penalized for voters’ decision in 2000 to expand Medicaid before the Affordable Care Act was enacted; extend the phase-out period of Medicaid expansion to provide states like Arizona the necessary time to adjust their budgets so citizens don’t have the rug pulled out from under them; and change the growth rate for Medicaid so that Arizona is not punished for operating a successful Medicaid program that cuts costs and streamlines services.

Reading that, I get the impression that he wants a better healthcare system, thinks Obamacare doesn't deliver what is needed and has too many problems, but doesn't think McTurtle's proposed healthcare bill would fix things and without quite some radical amendments would not get his vote.

After consensus wasn't reached, he reiterated his standpoint from the article on what should be done next in the following tweet:

 

I am ever so slightly hopeful that McTurtle won't be happy to have him back. Although you never can tell...

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"Republicans are throwing spaghetti at the wall on health care to see what sticks"

Spoiler

In May, House Republicans and President Trump celebrated dragging a health-care bill over the finish line by a few votes.

Senate Republicans promptly discarded the bill. It was too conservative, too politically messy and it wouldn't even pass Senate budget rules to avoid a Democratic filibuster. They'd have to write their own, pass it and figure out how to reconcile it with House Republicans later.

That plan failed.

So this Tuesday, which is probably Senate Republicans' last best chance to change Obamacare, they are right back where they started: No bill of their own, but a likely motion to proceed on the House-passed version of the bill. They have no plan for how to get it, or any other changes to health-care policy, passed. But they're hurtling toward a free-for-all vote Tuesday evening anyway.

This is remarkable. It's like making health-care policy by throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

The plan is to hold a procedural vote to allow debate on the House bill, the one the Congressional Budget Office estimated could leave 23 million more people uninsured over the next decade than Obamacare. If that passes, Republican leaders will let senators throw a bunch of amendments at it and see what happens.

Possible amendments could include a full repeal of Obamacare, or a substitution of McConnell’s Obamacare overhaul, or whatever other changes to health care a Republican senator wants to make.

...

Put another way: Republicans are waving the white flag on health care. They have no idea how to get legislation passed in a party ideologically at-odds with itself.

“I think they just want to say they tried,” said Alice Rivlin, a health-care policy analyst with the Brookings Institution. “[Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell (R-Ky.) may be genuinely unsure of the outcome and hoping for the best, where 'best' means anything that gets 50 votes."

This is not normal policymaking. When Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010, they reasonably could have been accused of rushing through the final vote in the Senate. But this was after months of public hearings and debate. At the very least, the Democrats who voted “yes” and the Republicans who voted “no” knew what legislation they were voting on and the impact it would have on the health-insurance market and federal budget.

Contrast that with Republicans' process this year. Leaders literally wrote a bill in secret. That secret bill, and a second iteration, failed to get the support of 50 of 52 Republicans. And now, here's Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) talking to reporters Monday night, about 24 hours before an expected vote:

...

Republican leaders point out that they modify House bills with amendments all the time, but that's not the usual practice for a piece of legislation that would affect one-sixth of the economy.

This isn't just a procedural mess for Republicans. It's a political one as well. They've spent seven years universally campaigning on the need to repeal and replace Obamacare. They finally have control of Washington.

The moment is upon them, and they don't have a bill to vote for. Nor any idea of whether it will pass. Nor any idea of whether it can even be voted on under budget rules called reconciliation that let Republicans avoid a Democratic filibuster. Basically, they have no plan.

In a couple of sentences Monday, Trump outlined the brutal reality for Republicans right now:

“Every Republican running for office promised immediate relief from this disastrous law. We as a party must fulfill the promise to voters of this country to repeal and replace, what they've been saying for the last seven years. But so far, Republicans haven't done their job in ending the Obamacare nightmare.”

Or, in one sentence: It doesn't look like Republicans are going to be able to repeal Obamacare anytime soon.

I don't know that I agree with the final assessment. McTurtle is going to move heaven and earth to screw over the American public.

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I'm not sure about this, but I hope it's true: "G.O.P. Support for Trump Is Starting to Crack"

Spoiler

Again and again over the past year, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have had to decide what kind of behavior they are willing to tolerate from Donald Trump. Again and again, McConnell and Ryan have bowed down to Trump.

They have mumbled occasional words of protest, sometimes even harsh ones, like Ryan’s use of “racist” last year. Then they have gone back to supporting Trump.

The capitulation of McConnell and Ryan has created an impression — especially among many liberals — that congressional Republicans stand behind the president. McConnell and Ryan, after all, are the leaders of Congress, and they continue to push for the legislation Trump wants and to permit his kleptocratic governing.

But don’t be fooled: Republican support for the president has started to crack.

Below the leadership level, Republicans are defying Trump more often, and McConnell and Ryan aren’t always standing in their way. You can see this defiance in the bipartisan Senate investigation of the Russia scandal. You can see it in the deal on Russian sanctions. And you can see it in the Senate’s failure, so far at least, to pass a health care bill.

It’s true that we still don’t know how these stories will end. If the Senate passes a damaging health care bill or lets Trump halt the Russia investigation, I will revisit my assessment. For now, though, I think many political observers are missing the ways that parts of Trump’s own party have subtly begun to revolt.

Just listen to Trump himself. “It’s very sad that Republicans,” he wrote in a weekend Twitter rant, “do very little to protect their President.” In a historical sense, he is right. Members of Congress usually support a new president of their own party much more strongly than Republicans are now.

They typically understand that a young presidency offers the rare opportunity for sweeping legislation — like the Reagan tax cut, the George W. Bush tax cut, the Clinton deficit plan and the Obama stimulus, health bill and financial regulation. Some intraparty tensions are unavoidable, and defectors kill some legislation — as happened with the Clinton health plan and the Obama climate plan. But partisan loyalty is the norm.

Congress members tend to echo White House talking points fulsomely. They find the votes to pass bills. They defend the president against scandal. And the loyalty doesn’t stop in the first year. During Watergate, as the political scientist Jonathan Bernstein has noted, most Republicans stood by Richard Nixon until almost the bitter end.

Matt Glassman, another political scientist, is one of the sharper observers of the White House-Congress relationship, and I asked him to put the current situation in context. Glassman said that many progressives have made the mistake of comparing how they want Congress to treat Trump with what it is doing. The more relevant yardstick is how Congress’s treatment compares historically.

“The current congressional G.O.P. seems less supportive and more constraining of the Potus than basically any in history,” Glassman wrote to me, “save the unique circumstances of Andrew Johnson (who wasn’t really a Republican) and John Tyler (who bucked his party aggressively), neither of whom were elected.”

Many of today’s Republicans avoid going on television as Trump surrogates. They mock him off the record, and increasingly on the record, too. In recent weeks, eight senators have publicly stood in the way of a health care bill. Republican senators are also helping to conduct an investigation of Trump’s campaign and have backed the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel.

One reason is that they don’t fear Trump. About 90 percent of Republican House members won a larger vote share in their district last year than Trump did, according to Sarah Binder of George Washington University. Since he took office, Trump’s nationwide net approval rating has fallen to minus 16 (with only 39 percent approving) from plus 4.

So it’s not just Republican politicians who are inching away from Trump. Republican voters are, too.

None of this is meant to suggest that congressional Republicans have been profiles in courage. They haven’t been. They have mostly stood by as Trump has lied compulsively, denigrated the rule of law and tried to shred the modern safety net. But they have put up just enough resistance to keep him from doing far more damage than he otherwise would have.

In the months ahead, unfortunately, that level of resistance is unlikely to be sufficient. Trump has made clear that he isn’t finished trying to take health insurance away from millions of people or trying to hide the truth about his Russia ties. “The constitutional crisis won’t be if Trump fires Mueller,” as the A.C.L.U.’s Kate Oh put it. “The constitutional crisis is if Congress takes no real action in response.”

For now, anxious optimism — or maybe optimistic anxiety — seems the appropriate attitude.

 

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Senator Thom Tillis(who is a slime ball) decided to take a poke at Trump by making a public statement that he supports Sessions and that he did the right thing.

Quote

I’ve worked with Jeff Sessions for years, and while we certainly may not agree on the specifics of every issue, I believed he would be a great Attorney General because of his unwavering commitment to the rule of law. In the nearly six months he has led the Department of Justice, he has maintained that commitment every day and demonstrated why he was widely respected during his years as a U.S. Senator.
 
While some may argue that he should not have recused himself from the Russia investigation, Attorney General Sessions demonstrated good judgement by doing so and removed all appearances of a potential conflict. The Attorney General’s recusal was ultimately made in the best interests of the Department of Justice and the country.

The bolded is totally meaning Trump. 

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Lindsey Graham is an idiot.

 

Of course, the comments are hilarious.

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Wait a minute... I didn't see @formergothardite's post before I posted mine. 

Something smells fishy, especially if you take @GreyhoundFan's post into account. Is this rebellion? Are they suddenly singing praises of Sessions in an attempt to keep him in place in order to protect Mueller? Are they trying (probably in vain) to waylay a 'recess' appointment?

Or is this just coincidence? :think:

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It could be the Good Old Boys club has decided to protect one of their own. Trump is and always will be an outsider, but Sessions is well known and has worked with these people for a long time. They have no loyalty to Trump and it looks like some of them are willing to side with Sessions. 

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Argh, this popped up as "breaking": "GOP leaders close to securing 50 votes on key health-care vote"

Spoiler

Senate Republican leaders appeared close to securing the support they needed Tuesday to begin debate on their plan to rewrite the Affordable Care Act, according to lawmakers and aides, though the proposal they would consider could change dramatically once senators begin voting.

Republican leaders now see a scaled-down version of the bill as perhaps their best chance of winning final passage on some kind of measure to overhaul Obamacare. But they are expected to vote on several different versions of health-care legislation before getting to that point — including a straight repeal of the ACA and the bill produced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that has so far failed to gain traction among Senate Republicans.

If senators passed this stripped-down version — which some Republicans refer to as “skinny repeal” — they would set up a House-Senate conference to resolve the differences between the two proposals, buying Republicans more time. But nothing seemed certain as the afternoon health-care vote loomed.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will return to Washington on Tuesday afternoon for the key procedural vote to start debate, which will allow the Senate to move forward with health-care legislation. A longtime holdout on launching debate, conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), indicated on Twitter that he was now open to the idea. That puts the leadership within range of the votes it needs, as McConnell negotiated with centrists by promising that they would ultimately like the final product.

“This morning, @SenateMajLdr informed me that the plan for today is to take up the 2015 clean repeal bill as I’ve urged,” Paul tweeted. “If that is the plan, I will vote to proceed to have this vote. I also now believe we will be able to defeat the new spending and bailouts.”

McCain, who was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, will arrive at the Capitol at 2:45 p.m., according to his office. The senator, who had been recuperating from surgery and exploring treatment options in Arizona, will later deliver remarks on the Senate floor after the vote.

President Trump praised the senator for returning in an early-morning tweet Tuesday before exhorting Republicans to back the measure.

“So great that John McCain is coming back to vote. Brave - American hero! Thank you John,” tweeted Trump, who had criticized McCain during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Republican senators braced Tuesday for a long day in the Capitol. The Senate is scheduled to gavel in at noon and GOP senators will spend the early afternoon inside a weekly policy luncheon where many are hoping to gain more clarity from McConnell on what they will be asked to vote for in the afternoon or evening.

On the Senate floor, McConnell called the procedural vote “a critical first step” in unwinding the landmark 2010 health care law.

As the scheduled vote neared, McConnell said Republican senators had a chance to follow through on a seven-year promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He also repeated the thinly-veiled threat Trump leveled in a speech a day earlier: a vote to block debate on repeal is a vote to save Obamacare.

“Any senator who votes against starting debate is telling America that you’re just fine with the Obamacare nightmare,” McConnell said. “I would urge them to remember the families who are hurting under this collapsing law.”

McConnell is currently planning to file motions to bring up a version of a 2015 bill repealing the law outright, according to several individuals briefed on the plan who asked for anonymity to discuss private conversations, with several degrees of amendments. These amendments would include some version of a more recent Senate health care bill and proposals by both Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).

The Cruz amendment would allow insurers to offer coverage on the ACA market that does not include all the benefits currently required under the law, as long as they provided one fully-compliant plan. The Portman amendment would add an additional $100 billion in flexible spending under Medicaid, according to these individuals.

Even with McCain in the Capitol and voting to proceed to the bill — and it’s not yet certain he will support it — McConnell can only lose two of the other 50 Republican senators. All 48 Democrats plan to vote no.

In order to win over a handful of centrist senators, who have expressed concern about the bill’s deep cuts to Medicaid and its phaseout of the program’s expansion under the ACA, top administration officials have promised lawmakers more flexibility and extra funding to help transition millions of low-income Americans onto private insurance.

McConnell and his deputies were still bartering with a handful of GOP holdouts throughout Monday evening and into Tuesday morning, according to several GOP aides. Leaders argued skeptics should vote to start debate on the grounds that they would be happy with the final bill, without revealing exact details of what the legislation would include.

Seema Verma, director of the Health and Human Services Department’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has provided some Republicans an analysis of how the bill would affect people covered by the expansion in their states, according to individuals briefed on the matter. They said Verma has suggested that money in the bill could help state residents pay premiums to obtain the lowest-level plans on the ACA-market, known as “bronze” plans and has promised up to $100 billion in flexible Medicaid funding.

Several of these Medicaid expansion-state GOP senators, including Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Todd C. Young (Ind.) and Rob Portman (Ohio), held one of their regular meetings on Monday night. Portman left the session and headed straight to McConnell’s office to discuss the health-care proposal.

Vice President Pence and White House legislative affairs director Marc Short plan to attend Tuesday’s lunch, Short said Tuesday. He said the president has been placing calls “to a couple of members” in hopes of rounding up the votes to proceed to the bill. He said the administration has also serves as a resource to provide “technical assistance” to senators looking to get policy questions answered as they make up their minds.

On Tuesday a coalition of medical and consumer groups reiterated their intense opposition to all the health-care plans Senate Republicans have been considering, calling on them to drop those bills and begin anew with a bipartisan process that includes standard committee hearings.

In a conference call, David Barbe, the president of the American Medical Association and part of the coalition, challenged the claims Senate GOP leaders have made about their main legislation to dismantle large parts of the Affordable Care Act.

“It does not make care more affordable to low-income Americans,” Barbe said. “It does not reduce out-of-pocket costs. It could trigger substantial increases for patients with preexisting conditions.”

Only one senator, centrist Susan Collins (Maine) has said publicly she would not vote “yes” to move forward on any of the plans that have been floated so far.

On Twitter Tuesday morning the president described the procedural vote that would allow debate on health-care legislation to begin as a crucial litmus test for his party.

“After 7 years of talking, we will soon see whether or not Republicans are willing to step up to the plate!” Trump wrote, adding in another, “ObamaCare is torturing the American People.The Democrats have fooled the people long enough. Repeal or Repeal & Replace! I have pen in hand.”

Okay, I don't think I'd use the term "brave" to characterize John McCain's speedy return to congress, especially if it's to vote to blow up our healthcare system. And, Seema Verma's push, to "help" Medicaid recipients switch to bronze plans is ridiculous. Bronze plans are not that great.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/25/senators-on-hot-mic-trump-is-crazy-im-worried/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.f9efb491d8da

Senators on hot mic: Trump is ‘crazy,’ ‘I’m worried’

Spoiler

 

At the end of a Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday morning, Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) didn’t switch off her microphone. Apparently speaking to Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking Democrat of the committee, Collins discussed the federal budget — and President Trump’s lack of familiarity with the details of governing.

After Reed praises Collins’s handling of the hearing, held by the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she laments the administration’s handling of spending.

“I swear, [the Office of Management and Budget] just went through and whenever there was ‘grant,’ they just X it out,” Collins says. “With no measurement, no thinking about it, no metrics, no nothing. It’s just incredibly irresponsible.”

“Yes,” Reed replies. “I think — I think he’s crazy,” apparently referring to the president. “I mean, I don’t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy.”

“I’m worried,” Collins replies.

“Oof,” Reed continues. “You know, this thing — if we don’t get a budget deal, we’re going to be paralyzed.”

“I know,” Collins replies.

“[Department of Defense] is going to be paralyzed, everybody is going to be paralyzed,” Reed says.

“I don’t think he knows there is a [Budget Control Act] or anything,” Collins says, referring to a 2011 law that defines the budget process.

“He was down at the Ford commissioning,” Reed says, referring to President Trump’s weekend event launching a new aircraft carrier, “saying, ‘I want them to pass my budget.’ Okay, so we give him $54 billion and then we take it away across the board which would cause chaos.”

“Right,” Collins replies.

“It’s just — and he hasn’t — not one word about the budget. Not one word about the debt ceiling,” Reed says.

“Good point,” Collins replies.

“You’ve got [Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney saying we’re going to put in all sorts of stuff like a border wall. Then you’ve got [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin saying it’s got to be clean,” Reed continues. “We’re going to be back in September, and, you know, you’re going to have crazy people in the House.”

In a more salacious part of what was recorded, Collins then addressed a radio interview in which Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) suggested that if Collins were a man, he’d have challenged her to a duel for opposing the Senate Republicans’ Obamacare overhaul bill.

“Did you see the one who challenged me to a duel?” Collins asks.

“I know,” Reed replies. “Trust me. Do you know why he challenged you to a duel? ‘Cause you could beat the s— out of him.”

“Well, he’s huge,” Collins replies. “And he — I don’t mean to be unkind, but he’s so unattractive it’s unbelievable.”

“Did you see the picture of him in his pajamas next to this Playboy bunny?” she continues, referring to an infamous photo of Farenthold, below.

 

 

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@AmazonGrace -- great minds! I was just coming to post that article. It's too funny. I'm not surprised, because I think there's plenty of talk going on behind closed doors, but you would think they would be more aware of hot mics. I'm sure Trumplethinskin will tweet something nasty about one or both of the senators.

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1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

@AmazonGrace -- great minds! I was just coming to post that article. It's too funny. I'm not surprised, because I think there's plenty of talk going on behind closed doors, but you would think they would be more aware of hot mics. I'm sure Trumplethinskin will tweet something nasty about one or both of the senators.

Here's a thought.

What if they really are quite aware of hot mics?

hmmm.gif.099831e0dfa6b92a975cfe6687f61458.gif

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