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United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)


Destiny

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Oh my, somebody's angry. And he's giving it to them and will not be shut up!

It would be great if somebody actually listened to what he was saying...

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I just woke up, looked at Facebook, and saw a bunch of vague posts about health care. I wasn't sure if they were talking about the Skinny Repeal, so I told my husband I was going to check the real news. So - I came here... 

Maybe Caligula shouldn't have threatened Murkowski. She looked like she was set to vote yes earlier in the week. Maybe erratic, angry petulance isn't the best was to be a leader? Maybe?

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Watching Turtle man almost cry over failing made my morning. He was looking at McCain when he voted no like he wanted to leap over there and strangle him. 

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The WaPo's daily mega article talks about how the attempt to push Murkowski backfired and how the TT wasn't able to get to McCain. It also analyzes how the TT's treatment of toxic elf Sessions is causing Repugs to start pushing back. It's a good read: "The Daily 202: Trump’s hardball tactics backfire as ‘skinny repeal’ goes down"

Spoiler

THE BIG IDEA: President Trump’s attacks on Republican senators are finally catching up with him, and Lisa Murkowski will not be bullied.

-- A last-ditch effort to keep the Obamacare repeal push alive went down by a vote of 49 to 51 in the wee hours of Friday morning, with three GOP members breaking ranks: John McCain, Susan Collins and Murkowski.

Mitch McConnell then pulled the legislation from consideration. “It is time to move on,” a dejected majority leader said.

-- There is nothing Trump can do any more that will get to McCain. Battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, the maverick was willing to vote “no” on the “skinny repeal” amendment so that other GOP colleagues who were also opposed to the measure could vote “yes” to save face with the conservative base. To this day, Trump has never apologized for saying that the former fighter pilot was not a war hero because he got captured in Vietnam. It gets less attention, but the president also besmirched the Arizona senator’s character by repeatedly accusing him of not taking care of other veterans. McCain has never forgotten.

-- A lot of the media coverage in the wake of the vote will focus on McCain, because he's the most famous, and Collins was always going to vote “no.” But Murkowski’s opposition was equally decisive and perhaps most illustrative of the problems ahead for Trump.

Trump, who won Alaska by 15 points, ripped the state’s senior senator on Twitter Wednesday after she opposed a key procedural motion to open debate on health care:

...

Later that day, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called Murkowski and the state’s other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, to threaten that the Trump administration may change its position on several issues that affect the state to punish Murkowski, such as blocking energy exploration and plans to allow the construction of new roads. “The message was pretty clear,” Sullivan told the Alaska Dispatch News.

Nevertheless, Murkowski persisted. In fact, she took it one step further and demonstrated that she has more leverage over Zinke than he has over her. As chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Murkowski indefinitely postponed a nominations markup that the Interior Department badly wants.

This demonstrated the degree to which Zinke’s ham-handed phone call was political malpractice. The secretary, or whoever at the White House ordered him to make the calls, clearly doesn’t understand the awesome power that comes with being the chairman of a Senate committee. Only an amateur would threaten the person who has oversight over his agency! If she wants, Murkowski can make Zinke’s life so unbelievably miserable. He has no idea. (The Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.)

A Murkowski spokeswoman denied that putting off the hearing was revenge or retaliation. Even if you believe that, and color us skeptical, postponing the hearing sent a crystal-clear message to the administration that she is not to be messed with. “I base my votes on what I believe is in Alaska's best interest,” Murkowski told reporters, with a smile.

Senators serve six-year terms, so they’re more insulated from pressure than representatives who are up every two years. Murkowski, who easily won a fourth term last year, is not up again until 2022, when Trump may no longer be president.

-- Machiavelli said it’s better to be feared than loved. For many Republican senators, Trump is neither.

On Capitol Hill, this week has felt like a turning point of sorts. “Republican lawmakers have openly defied President Trump in meaningful ways this week amid growing frustration ... with his surprise tweets, erratic behavior and willingness to trample on governing norms,” Mike DeBonis reports. “They passed legislation to stop him from lifting sanctions on Russia. They recoiled at his snap decision to ban transgender Americans from the military. And they warned him in no uncertain terms not to fire the attorney general or the special counsel investigating the president and his aides.”

-- The Senate voted 98 to 2 yesterday to pass the bill increasing sanctions against Russia, despite a veto threat. Only Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul opposed it. White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said yesterday morning that Trump “may veto the sanctions” so that he can “negotiate” with Russia, and incoming White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said later in the day that the president is still reviewing the final language of the legislation.

Many leading conservatives said publicly they are prepared to override Trump. “This is a very unique and particular case at a key moment,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). "If the president vetoes it, as is his right, there will be a debate, but I believe it will be overridden.”

-- There’s also been escalating backlash from Senate Republicans over Trump’s treatment of Jeff Sessions. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he would not hold any hearings on a replacement if Trump dismissed the attorney general:

...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced plans yesterday to introduce legislation that would prevent Trump from being able to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. “Some of the suggestions that the president is making go way beyond what’s acceptable in a rule-of-law nation,” Graham said. “This is not draining the swamp. What he’s interjecting is turning democracy upside down.”

“If you’re thinking of making a recess appointment to push out the attorney general, forget about it,” added Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), also a member of the Judiciary Committee. “The presidency isn’t a bull, and this country isn’t a china shop.”

“For the most part, Republicans on Capitol Hill have sought to avert their gaze whenever the president’s tweets or actions spark controversy. So there has been nothing like this so far in Trump’s presidency,” Dan Balz explains. “Whether that’s because it involves a former member of the Capitol Hill club or because of the potential implications for a constitutional crisis if the president tries to scuttle the Mueller investigation, the response to this has been different.”

-- Knowing that his former colleagues have his back, Sessions appeared on Fox News last night to declare that he will stay on as attorney general — despite suffering a week of deliberate public humiliation at the hands of the president. He made clear that the only way he will leave is if he’s fired, which he knows Trump is reluctant to do. “If he wants to make a change, he can certainly do so and I would be glad to yield in that circumstance, no doubt about it,” Sessions said, adding that the sustained attacks by POTUS have been “kind of hurtful.” He also said he does not regret his decision to recuse himself from the Russia probe. “I understand his feelings about it because this has been a big distraction for him,” Sessions said. “I talked to experts in the Department of Justice …  I’m confident I made the right decision, a decision that’s consistent for the rule of law.” (Sari Horwitz wrote up the interview with Tucker Carlson.)

“What makes the spectacle so excruciating is that the wounded Sessions plods on,” conservative Charles Krauthammer writes in his column this morning. “Trump relishes such a cat-and-mouse game and, by playing it so openly, reveals a deeply repellent vindictiveness in the service of a pathological need to display dominance. Dominance is his game.”

The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board noted earlier this week that Trump has crossed “a red line” with his “unseemly campaign against his own attorney general”: “A sitting President is not a one-man show. He needs allies in politics and allies to govern. Mr. Trump’s treatment of Jeff Sessions makes clear that he will desert both at peril to his Presidency. … Past some point of political erosion, Mr. Trump’s legislative agenda will become impossible to accomplish.”

As a New York Times reporter quipped after the health bill went down:

...

-- Trump has made several other enemies in the Senate.

America First Policies, a pro-Trump outside group that is closely linked with the administration, launched a $1 million campaign of attack ads against Sen. Dean Heller last month after he announced opposition to an earlier health-care bill because of its cuts to Medicaid. The group backed off after Senate leaders told the White House to cut it out.

Meanwhile, Trump and White House officials have been actively trying to recruit a primary challenger to Jeff Flake next year. The animus grew out of the senator calling on Trump to drop out after the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape emerged last October.

Both guys voted for skinny repeal, but does the president really think Heller and Flake are going to have his back down the road when stuff really hits the fan? If he is that delusional, I’ve got some oceanfront property in their home states of Nevada and Arizona that I’d love to sell him.

The bottom line is that Trump’s shortsightedness and penchant for taking everything personally causes him to constantly make myopic decisions that may ultimately undermine his presidency. He’s so focused on trying to win the day that he is perennially unable to play the long game.

MORE ON HOW THE HEALTH-CARE BILL WENT DOWN:

-- “In a last-minute rescue bid, Vice President Pence — there to be the tiebreaking vote if needed — stood at McCain’s desk for 21 minutes cajoling the senator to no avail,” Juliet Eilperin, Sean Sullivan and Kelsey Snell report. “McCain and Pence then walked to the Republican cloak room to confer in private and later to the lobby off the Senate chamber. When McCain returned — without Pence — he stopped in the well of the chamber, cast his ‘no’ vote — sparking stunned gasps and some applause — and returned to his seat. McConnell and his leadership deputies stood watching, grim-faced and despondent."

-- For much of yesterday, it looked like McCain could get to “yes”: "(He) had been seeking an ironclad guarantee from House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) that, if the Senate approved this latest proposal, the House would not move to quickly approve the bill in its current form and instead engage in a broad House-Senate negotiation ... Ryan issued a statement intended to assuage the concerns of McCain and two others, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), but the 2008 presidential nominee deemed the speaker’s statement as insufficient."

-- Ed O’Keefe has a ticktock on how he got to “no”: “McCain headed for the stage — the Senate floor — around midnight. … ‘I knew it when he walked on the floor,’ [Chuck] Schumer later recounted, explaining that McCain had already called to share his plans. But few, if any, of his Republican colleagues realized what was about to transpire.”

-- He stuck his neck out, but McCain was hardly the only Senate Republican who was deeply skeptical of McConnell's strategy to pass a placeholder to get to a conference committee. Matt O’Brien reports: “[If the skinny repeal were enacted], according to the CBO, about 16 million fewer people would be insured 10 years from now under this Republican plan. … [T]he CBO [also] estimates that premiums would increase 20 percent more than they already would as a result of this plan. In other words, millions more people wouldn't have insurance, and it'd be more expensive for everybody else. It's no wonder, then, that even the Republicans who [were] voting for this bill [didn’t] want it to become law. ... (Graham) called it a ‘disaster’ and a ‘fraud.’”

-- McCain called for the Senate to start over: “We must now return to the correct way of legislating and send the bill back to committee, hold hearings, receive input from both sides of aisle, heed the recommendations of nation’s governors, and produce a bill that finally delivers affordable health care for the American people. We must do the hard work our citizens expect of us and deserve.”

-- Trump expressed disappointment. The president has repeatedly threatened to cut off ACA subsidies to insurance companies that help cover lower-income Americans. The defeat may give Trump an excuse to pull the trigger:

...

 

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Jennifer Rubin had a great take on the skinny repeal. I especially love the quote from Chris Murphy: "Republicans’ dream of repealing Obamacare ends"

Spoiler

We’ve said it before, but the Senate has reached a new low point in a once revered body. (On the bright side, at least Republicans’ hypocritical invocation of Senate traditions and Constitutional niceties need not be tolerated.) To the rescue, however, rode two brave women and a war hero stricken with cancer.

Since the healthcare debate got underway, the Republican-controlled Senate has had a fundamental problem: It had no bill it could pass. We’re not talking about meeting the 60-vote threshold; they had not been able find 50 votes (plus Vice President Mike Pence’s tiebreaker) for any version of repeal and replace. So they hit upon the idea of passing an atrocious bill that would repeal the individual mandate, dumps 15 million people off healthcare insurance and raises premiums 20 percent. Then the kicker, as The Post reported Thursday:

In other words, millions more people wouldn’t have insurance, and it’d be more expensive for everybody else. It’s no wonder, then, that even the Republicans who are voting for this bill don’t want it to become law. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called it a “disaster” and a “fraud.” Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) said “the only possible problem” with it is that the House might vote for it too. And Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) wants a guarantee that the House won’t turn around and pass it.

Three senators actually held a press conference to say they’d vote for it — but only if they got an ironclad guarantee the House wouldn’t pass it. That’s right: They would only pass something they hate in order to kick the can down the road, with no prospect they can find a bill satisfactory to enough Senate Republicans. Really, gentleman, that’s your idea of responsible governance? Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) smartly characterized the goings on as “weapons grade bonkers.”

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan tried to accommodate them, but had to hedge. “If moving forward requires a conference committee, that is something the House is willing to do,” he said in a written statement. “The House remains committed to finding a solution and working with our Senate colleagues, but the burden remains on the Senate to demonstrate that it is capable of passing something that keeps our promise.” Whatever that meant, a final (we think) vote on the skinny repeal took place in the wee hours of the night on Friday.

In the end, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — in a sort of Hollywood ending — voted no along with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The bill died, and with it perhaps, finally, the quixotic vote to end Obamacare.

And what was the excuse for the rest of the Senate? They all had the power to stop a bill many openly trashed as a joke and conceded would do great damage. Nevertheless, all hoped someone else would do the dirty work of derailing it. I’m hard-pressed to think of another instance in which virtually all senators of one party (save three) declared their inability to make a critically important decision. It’s junk but send it to conference where someone else can make the tough calls.  So why are they there? The ambitious GOP senators who hid from their responsibilities have no business being in the United States Senate, let alone seeking higher office.

After 7 years of protest and 7 months of legislative paralysis, Republicans have not figured out what to do about Obamacare, but they cannot admit their failure and refuse to take their medicine in the form of the base’s wrath. It took three brave souls, one in the twilight of his career, to finally put their constituents and the country above partisan hackery.

 

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6 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

And what was the excuse for the rest of the Senate? They all had the power to stop a bill many openly trashed as a joke and conceded would do great damage. Nevertheless, all hoped someone else would do the dirty work of derailing it. I’m hard-pressed to think of another instance in which virtually all senators of one party (save three) declared their inability to make a critically important decision. It’s junk but send it to conference where someone else can make the tough calls.  So why are they there? The ambitious GOP senators who hid from their responsibilities have no business being in the United States Senate, let alone seeking higher office.

I'm quoting this part, because it is so very noteworthy and important. This cowardice, this fear of acting against the grain is precisely why America is on the verge of an autocracy right now. This hyper tunnelvision of 'we need to win something' is what enables the abomination that is the administration.

The Repugliklan party color shouldn't be red. Rather, it should be an ugly and prutrescent yellow.

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Oh, for pity sake. Look at Fuckabee's reaction to the vote last night:

20170728_huck1.PNG

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interesting article about some of the drama that went on overnight. "‘Wait for the show’: High drama and low voices in a long, weird night at the Capitol."

Spoiler

Vice President Pence hurtled toward the Senate in his motorcade, the Republicans’ health-care legislation hung in the balance, and — well, where was John McCain?

Journalists had fanned out around the Capitol, searching for the Arizona senator, a man they believed controlled the fate of the so-called “skinny repeal” bill. The fact that Papa John’s pizza had been delivered to his Russell building office was a good sign he was in there somewhere, but the cleaning crew that kept popping in and out was a sign that maybe he wasn’t.

The clock struck midnight, and out he came. The hero or the villain, depending on which side you were on, and neither side knew which yet.

“It’s very hard to do the right thing,” he said into a bright red phone pressed to his ear. Was he talking about health care to the person on the other end? (Assuming there was someone on the other end.)

The Republican senator, never one to shy away from the spotlight, wasn’t about to reveal his big twist to the journalists trailing behind him. Not yet.

“Wait for the show,” he said.

Before the theatrics began early Friday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) sneaked off to his hideaway office off the floor of the Senate. With its vaulted ceilings, plush furniture and an unbeatable view of the Washington Monument, this was a place of respite for the longest-serving senator, a quiet escape he liked to share with his colleagues on late nights like these.

“This late, I don’t think we’ll be serving cocktails,” the Vermont Democrat said as he sat in a cream-colored armchair. “Well, they can have them if they’d like.”

He got up to head out the door. It was just after 9:00 p.m.

“I’m going to walk back to the floor and try and figure out what the hell is going on,” he said.

What the hell was going on? Republicans finished writing something called a “skinny repeal” health-care bill over lunch Thursday and were trying to use it to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act late at night. Would it pass? What would happen if it did? And what on earth is a vote-o-rama? (Answer courtesy of Sen. Claire McCaskill: “A vote-o-rama is really weird,” the Missouri Democrat said. “And dumb.” Thanks, senator.)

The only thing people wandering the halls of Congress seemed to agree on was that bedtime was nowhere in sight.

“It’s going to go late,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) told reporters as he went to eat Chipotle with his colleagues in a Senate conference room. “Late, late, late, late.”

“I don’t think that it will go several nights,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who hopped off the Senate’s underground tram sporting a five o’clock shadow that he dubbed a “protest beard.”

Time had taken on an elastic quality. It was going to be an endless night, and yet there wasn’t nearly enough time to debate a bill of this magnitude. A day earlier, after the similarly nail-biting “motion to proceed” vote, a 20-hour clock had been set to count down the hours of debate required before a vote on repeal, and 30 hours later, due to various procedural stoppages, it was still running.

“My days kind of blend together these days,” Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) said on the Senate floor, “with this health care that we’re working on.”

Leahy might have been ambivalent about late-night cocktails, but a bottle of Jim Beam had mysteriously appeared atop the microwave in the press gallery.

“Break in case of an emergency,” a harried scribe said as he scurried by. Which emergency would that be? Would it be the “emergency” news conference that Sens. McCain and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) had called to express their distaste with their own party’s bill (words used by Graham: “half-assed,” “dumbest thing in history” and “disaster”)? Or would it be the “emergency” meeting Democrats had called to discuss their options?

“They just ordered Chinese food,” a punch-drunk Democratic aide reported. “Emergency Chinese food.”

Cots went wheeling through Senate hallways. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) headed off to smoke a cigar from his office balcony. McCaskill snacked on an ice cream Choco Taco.

At 10:08 p.m., the show kicked off with a boom.

“This is nuclear-grade bonkers,” Murphy shouted into a Senate chamber. Nearby, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) used his pinky to pick emergency Chinese food from his teeth. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) scowled as he read a pile of papers, and Enzi poked a stubby finger at his smartphone. For all of Murphy’s sense of drama, nobody was really listening in the chamber, but nobody ever does.

The clock was sputtering toward midnight when Enzi took the floor, digressing like your uncle after a scotch. He talked about infant mortality rates, about Ted Kennedy, about health savings accounts, about Segways, about “the inventiveness of the American people.”

Democrat after Democrat tried to get Enzi to yield for a question about the bill. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) tried. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) tried.

“I expect to have this hour,” Enzi said, deflecting each entreaty, “even if some of it is in silence.”

“Mr. President, will the speaker yield for a question about the very interesting points he’s making?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ventured at 11:42 p.m., addressing the presiding officer, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.).

“I will not,” Enzi said. “I will not.”

As Enzi spoke, Pence hurried to the Capitol in his motorcade, prepared to cast a tie-breaking vote if need be. “Shameshameshame” trended on Twitter. And the occasionally unpredictable McCain made the move from his office, with the promise of a “show.”

It was the most boring exciting show on earth; high drama and low voices. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), moderates who would be crucial in sinking the bill, surrounded McCain at his Senate desk and spoke with him in hushed tones. McCain smiled, or twitched. He gave a thumbs down — Twitter convulsed: He gave a thumbs down! — but in response to what? It was like the senior class all-night lock-in dance at your high school, but with senior citizens.

Pence came over, and the two traded jokes that were either funny or awkward. McCain shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, put his hand atop the veep’s. Time stood still, but all of a sudden it was 1 a.m.

Dozens of journalists craned their necks and cupped their ears from the gallery, but McCain spoke just out of earshot. Having misread every tea leaf of the past year and bungled every prediction, no one in the press corps wanted to guess what it all meant. But then at 1:10 a.m., McCain walked over to talk with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). A gaggle of Democrats surrounded the pale Republican, the man who had just returned to the Capitol after a brain tumor diagnosis, and who had done so to cast that “motion-to-proceed” vote that got everyone to this point.

He had disappointed Democrats a day earlier, but it was clear that whatever he was telling them now — body language analysis! — was different. He leaned over and hugged Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and the Democrats, for the first time in a long time, looked happy.

And so, McCain cast the vote that killed the latest attempt to repeal Obamacare. The audience of tourists, staffers and journalists gasped. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) went pink in the face. What the hell happened?

The bill died at 1:29 a.m. Friday. It was a late night in America, but not that late.

 

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6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Oh my, somebody's angry. And he's giving it to them and will not be shut up!

It would be great if somebody actually listened to what he was saying...

Okay add him to my Congressional crushes along with Waters and Raskin.

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These repugs had 8 freaking years to figure out how to save their rich ass donors and yet still can't come up with anything. Oh wait, they can, but they need to make sure  the democrats can't influence and you know "actually work" with them. Republicans have kept saying how they need to work with the democrats but I just have this huge mistrust since they don't really want to help their constituents.

I do applaud Murkowski and Collins and will be calling their offices to thank them because they were opposing it from the beginning. This is one of the only times McCain actually opposed something ( I read he repealed anything Obamacare related 61 times), he'll get most of the applause when he really shouldn't have.

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Senators McCain, Collins, and Murkowski, are going to catch hell from Dim Donald and his cult members for their votes early this morning. Collins and Murkowski will likely get the worst of it, as women who don't "know their place" are a favorite target of the unhinged. :pb_sad:

I'm sorry, once again, that John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are both utter fuckwits. I obviously didn't vote for them, and I desperately want them dispatched to that deserted island we always talk about. :pray:

Hearing about McConnell's tears when he lost the vote early this morning, made my cold, black heart leap for joy.  :twisted: 

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Not sure if this was posted. McCain gets the hero treatment but Mazie Hirono deserves it more I think 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/senator-mazie-hirono-health-care-plea_us_597ac22ae4b02a8434b55cda

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Oh, for pity sake. Look at Fuckabee's reaction to the vote last night:

20170728_huck1.PNG

Why don't you repeal and replace democracy while you're at it . 

Jesse Watters on Fox said that many people would like Trump to be the dictator so Obamacare could be replaced

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The Atlantic has a good article on The 10 Challenges Republicans Now Face

Spoiler

Here’s an after-action report, as Congress prepares to recess:

  1. The signature Republican domestic-policy demand of the past seven years is dead again. Deader than ever. Brought down by Republicans themselves, in the face of nearly unanimously hostile public opinion.
     
  2. Democratic constituencies have been mobilized to an intensity not seen since the worst days of the Iraq war. They have crowded town halls and barraged senators with phone calls and messages. The party’s serious internal differences—including over the future of health care—have been laid aside for the time.
     
  3. Republican constituencies have been split and demoralized. Working- and middle-class Republicans have been put on notice: Their party wanted to cut their Medicaid and other health-care benefits. Why should they show up in November to vote for more of that?
     
  4. Upmarket Republicans have been formally informed: Their party was duping them on Obamacare repeal, in all those years of yammering, it never developed anything like an alternative. The Obamacare taxes will remain in place, as will the law’s other costs and burdens. Why should they show up in November to vote for more of that?
     
  5. The White House is melting down in recrimination, rage, and failure. While opponents condemn Trump as authoritarian and corrupt, supporters in Congress and media want to talk about almost anything else: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, dirty rap lyrics—anything.
     
  6. Donors are hearing that funds donated to the Republican National Committee and other party funds have been used to pay the personal legal bills of the supposedly super-rich Trump family—and that more such spending is probably on the way.
     
  7. The special counsel’s investigation is triggering more and more erratic behavior from the president. Trump has repeatedly and publicly denounced his own attorney general—the one cabinet secretary executing a policy generally popular with the party’s conservative base, immigration enforcement. And this before the investigation has resulted in any legal consequences.
     
  8. The president has achieved the lowest approval rating ever recorded for a chief executive at this point in his tenure, despite generally favorable economic news and the absence of any acute foreign-policy crisis.
     
  9. The Democrats need take only 14 seats to flip the House. There are 7 Republican incumbents on the ballot in California, where the president’s approval rating has tumbled to 25 percent, down five points since Inauguration Day. There are 5 more in New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie’s approval rating has plunged to 15 percent.
     
  10. The 2018 Senate map favors Republicans, but the president has gone out of his way to tie the single most imperiled Republican incumbent, Nevada’s Dean Heller, tightly to him and to the unpopular health-care bill. The president is waging open war against Arizona’s Jeff Flake—and his approval rating has sunk below 50 percent in states that might otherwise have been thought of as pickup opportunities, including Missouri and Michigan.

Republican talkers have been warning that the failure of repeal would doom the party’s chances in 2018. That’s not quite right: Repeal would have been so unpopular that its success would actually have been the worst GOP outcome. But what is right is that the internal party dysfunction—and White House chaos—that produced the repeal failure is also leading to electoral defeat. It may well produce an electoral defeat of the epic scale of 2006 and 2010 for the party of the most disliked and distrusted first-term president of modern times.

Although I am always looking for the bright side of life ( :562479b0cbc9f_whistle1:....)  I do have to say that it is still a loooong 15 months until november 2018. Who knows what will happen in the meantime?

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2 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I'm sorry, once again, that John Cornyn and Ted Cruz are both utter fuckwits. I obviously didn't vote for them, and I desperately want them dispatched to that deserted island we always talk about.

One of my favorite musicians is Texas singer song writer James McMurtry.  Saw an interview with him on YouTube where he talks about being a Democrat and living in Texas. "I'm a Democrat, so of course we get no representation in Washington". He did go on to add that at least living in Austin he has some good local reps.

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Well gee wiz John is this really the time to leave Congress? We could lose another seat. Damn him.

Rep. John Delaney is running for president in 2020

 

Quote

Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), a moderate who has represented western Maryland for three terms on Capitol Hill, says he is launching a bid for the White House.

“The current administration is making us less prosperous and less secure,” Delaney wrote in an op-ed announcing his campaign that was published Friday afternoon in The Washington Post. “I’m running because I have an original approach to governing and economic policy that can put us on a different course.”

Delaney, 54, is a former health-care financier and one of the first Democrats to openly discuss a presidential run since the election in November of Republican Donald Trump.

He casts himself as “a progressive businessman” who respects “the power of our free-market economy while also insisting that there is a role for government to set goals and rules of the road and take care of those who are left behind.”

Delaney has an estimated net worth of more than $90 million and a demonstrated willingness to use it as a candidate, having spent $3.3 million in his first two House campaigns.

He represents western Maryland’s Sixth District, which is being challenged in court over a 2011 redistricting that Republicans say deprives them of their First Amendment rights to political expression.

The announcement, which had been rumored in Maryland political circles for weeks, follows more than a year of speculation about Delaney’s future. In May, aides hosed down rumors of a presidential run, sparked when MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews — husband of Maryland Democratic Party Chair Kathleen Matthews — said that Delaney had set up an office in Iowa.

For much of the past two years, Delaney had been widely considered a possible contender to challenge popular Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in 2018. He won a gubernatorial straw poll of activists at a Democratic summit in western Maryland’s Rocky Gap Casino Resort in April. But more recently, he declined to attend candidate forums until he decided whether to enter the governor’s race — a sign to many that his interest was waning as the field of Democratic hopefuls grew.

“I feel like it’s time for me to try to do something where I can make a bigger difference,” he told activists at the Rocky Gap gathering.

A centrist with a record of working across the aisle, Delaney would probably present himself in any political race as a moderate, business-minded alternative to his more left-leaning competitors.

In the House, he has devoted much of his legislative energy to proposals that would allow corporations to repatriate a portion of their overseas earnings tax-free in exchange for buying bonds to fund infrastructure improvements.

He was a first-time candidate in 2012, when he stunned the Democratic establishment by beating state Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Garagiola (D-Montgomery) in the primary.

Helped by new district boundaries that added thousands more Democratic voters from the Washington suburbs, he then ousted longtime incumbent Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R).

Two years later, Delaney narrowly avoided a general-election loss to conservative talk radio host Dan Bongino. He deflected a well-funded challenge from defense consultant Amie Hoeber last year, winning 55 percent of the vote.

Delaney’s decision to leave Congress sets the stage for a vigorous Democratic primary contest for a rare open seat. Maryland House Majority Leader C. William “Bill” Frick and Del. Aruna Miller have filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and begun raising money for the race. State Sen. Roger Manno, another Democrat, has said he will run if Delaney doesn’t.

Potomac wine executive David Trone, who spent a record $13 million of his own money in a losing bid for the 8th District congressional seat in 2016, also has told county Democrats that he would run in the 6th if Delaney moved on. (If not, he said, he was seriously considering a run for Montgomery County executive.)

The race will probably draw interest from Republicans in Montgomery County or Western Maryland as well, especially in a year when Hogan is on the ballot and should generate strong GOP turnout. Maryland has only one Republican among its eight House members.

A panel of federal judges said earlier this month that there is convincing evidence that state Democratic leaders intentionally drew voting boundaries in 2011 to make it easier for their party to pick up another congressional seat.

 

 

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@fraurosena, I hate to be a downer, but I think the health care debate will rear it's ugly head again before 2018. We know McCain has been diagnosed with brain cancer, one which has a miserable prognosis. A few days ago, a woman from Arizona (can't remember if she was a state office holder or a state senator) vocally wanted McCain to step aside. Having lived in Arizona as an adult, I'd be terrified to see who is appointed to finish his term. The State House and Senate skew very heavily Republican.

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On 7/28/2017 at 10:12 AM, GreyhoundFan said:

Oh, for pity sake. Look at Fuckabee's reaction to the vote last night:

20170728_huck1.PNG

Doesn't he realize that Putin will appoint the Senators? Seriously, could he be any more obvious?

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"Republicans’ failure to ‘repeal and replace’ Obamacare may cost them at the ballot box"

Spoiler

The Republican Party’s seven-year quest to undo the Affordable Care Act culminated Friday in a humiliating failure to pass an unpopular bill, sparking questions about how steep the costs will be for its congressional majorities.

While lawmakers have not completely abandoned the effort, they are now confronting the consequences of their flop. Not only has it left the GOP in a precarious position heading into next year’s midterm elections, but it also has placed enormous pressure on the party to pass an ambitious and complex overhaul of federal taxes.

Strategists argued for months that Republicans risked more by not acting and alienating their conservative base than by passing an unpopular repeal bill that could turn off swing voters. They now live in the worst of both worlds — with nothing to show for seven years of campaign promises, even though dozens of vulnerable lawmakers cast votes that could leave them exposed to attacks from Democrats.

“This is an epic failure by congressional Republicans,” said Tim Phillips, president of the conservative Koch network group Americans for Prosperity. “But it’s time to pivot to tax reform. There’s no time to pout.”

In the moments after the bare-bones repeal bill failed early Friday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said it was “time to move on.” But there seemed to be little stomach afterward among Republicans on Capitol Hill for acknowledging outright failure on their top campaign promise.

Lawmakers did agree, however, that when they return to Washington after Labor Day, they must succeed in their rewrite of the tax code after seven months that have seen too many of their top agenda items untouched.

“We’ve asked the voters for a lot,” said Rep. James B. Renacci (R-Ohio), who is leaving Congress after his current term to run for governor. “They’ve given us the House. They’ve given us the Senate. They’ve given us the presidency. It’s time to give them something back and get something done.”

Off the Hill, the collapse of the repeal effort has left conservative activists fuming about how the GOP could have flinched and pondering payback for the party establishment — particularly several moderate senators who voted for ACA repeal legislation when it had no chance of becoming law only to balk when it did.

In campaign after campaign since the ACA was enacted in 2010, GOP candidates used pledges to “repeal and replace Obamacare” to gain majorities in the House and Senate, and President Trump promised to unravel the law as one of his first acts in office.

Instead, Republicans have continually failed to coalesce around an alternative — vividly demonstrated by the dramatic failure of the “skinny repeal” on the Senate floor early Friday morning. They appear trapped in the fallacy of sunk costs: Having invested so much political capital in the ACA’s repeal, they cannot possibly abandon it.

Numerous House lawmakers leaving a closed-door Republican conference meeting hours after the Senate bill collapsed said that efforts to undo the increasingly popular health law would have to continue.

“I am disappointed and frustrated, but we should not give up,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) declared.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the leader of an influential bloc of House conservatives, insisted a deal was still within reach and said he’d approached key senators. And while Trump said he would “let Obamacare implode,” he also urged senators on Twitter to jettison their filibuster rules to pass “really good things.”

But key figures warned Republicans to move on before the health morass sinks the rest of the party’s agenda — most importantly, the tax overhaul.

“Quarantine it,” said Josh Holmes, a GOP strategist and former chief of staff to McConnell who coined the “repeal and replace” mantra in 2010. “You can let it destroy your entire agenda and your entire party as a result of inaction by continuing to dwell on something that, frankly, they’ve proven unable to do.”

But conservative activists have been furious in the aftermath of the repeal vote and have cast about for ways to punish those they consider responsible.

The three Republican senators who cast the decisive votes on Friday — Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — are largely immune to immediate electoral consequences. Murkowski, who withstood public pressure from Trump, is less than a year into a six-year term; McCain, also reelected last year, is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer; and Collins, who has not faced a serious primary threat since 1996, next stands for reelection in 2020 and is considering a run for governor next year.

But activists are still angry that several other Republican senators — Dean Heller (Nev.), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) and Rob Portman (Ohio), as well as McCain and Murkowski — voted for an ACA repeal measure in 2015, when President Obama was certain to veto it, but opposed an almost identical measure this week knowing Trump could sign it into law.

“That level of cynicism is breathtaking, even in the political world,” said Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, which helped drive the public backlash to the ACA ahead of the 2010 Republican congressional wave.

Only Heller faces reelection next year, however, and he has yet to attract a conservative primary challenger despite emerging as a key swing vote who pushed to reduce the scope of the Senate’s efforts.

Adam Brandon, president of the conservative activist group FreedomWorks, said Heller “opened himself wide open” to a primary challenge: “By bending over backwards to save Medicaid expansion, to preserve the fastest-growing entitlement program in the United States, what conservative, Republican, libertarian constituency were you serving?”

Brandon, whose group deemed the turncoats “Freedom Frauds,” said the events of the past months have revealed a party with a double standard in handling its right flank versus its more moderate faction.

Had the Senate’s leading conservatives tanked the health bill, he said, “they would be recruiting someone to primary Mike Lee and Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, but that’s not happening” with Collins, McCain and Murkowski. He also suggested that the committee chairmanships held by the trio ought to be at risk.

In the House, the political challenge posed to Republicans is the opposite: Dozens of members targeted for defeat by national Democrats voted for the American Health Care Act, the GOP bill judged by the Congressional Budget Office to result in higher premiums for older and sick Americans.

Democrats made clear they intend to use that vote in their 2018 campaigns, even if the bill was never ultimately made law.

“House Republicans can’t turn back time and undo the morally bankrupt vote they took to kick 23 million Americans off their health insurance, impose an unfair age tax and cause skyrocketing premiums,” said Tyler Law, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Speaker Ryan and all House Republicans own their disastrous bill, and it will certainly haunt their imperiled Republican majority in 2018.”

On the flip side, House Republicans who cast votes for the bill cannot point to any finished product that might motivate more conservative voters. Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, insisted that the circumstances surrounding the health bill would actually work to the GOP’s benefit.

“Our base knows what we did,” Stivers said. “But it also isn’t going to become law, so . . . I think they have a hard time really punishing our members for some theoretical details.”

A handful of moderate Republican lawmakers said Friday they would be open to pursuing a bipartisan fix to the ACA. But for most rank-and-file Republicans, the approach is simple: Never say die.

“It’s only a defeat if we surrender,” said Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.). “Look, the U.S. Navy was devastated at Pearl Harbor, but three years later the Japanese surrendered to us. . . . The history books of America are marked by us rebounding from defeat and turning it into victory. We’re going to keep pushing.”

Inside the closed-door conference meeting Friday, Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-Maine) showed his colleagues clips of early Atlanta Falcons touchdowns in this year’s Super Bowl — a game won by the New England Patriots after a furious 25-point comeback.

Plenty of House members showed a willingness to hang the health bill’s failure on the Senate, which due to its filibuster rules has yet to take up or pass dozens of significant House bills. In a final meeting before a five-week summer recess, Ryan told his colleagues that they represented the most functional branch of government.

But several House members said they were skeptical House Republicans would be able to separate themselves from the other chambers’s failure and feared that they, too, would suffer from a dejected GOP base.

Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), who represents a blue-collar downstate district Democrats are heavily targeting in 2018, said he rarely encounters a constituent who airs frustrations with a particular chamber.

“They never say, ‘Well, it’s the Senate or the House.’ What they say it is, ‘It’s Congress,’” he said. “I can’t change who the Senate is, okay? But I can keep doing my job, and that’s what I intend to talk about.”

I saw something (sorry can't remember where) that showed a push to recall Lisa Murkowski and put Palin in her seat. Oh yeah, that is one of the worst ideas ever.

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16 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I saw something (sorry can't remember where) that showed a push to recall Lisa Murkowski and put Palin in her seat. Oh yeah, that is one of the worst ideas ever.

If Scaramucci is still around, Palin could miss half or more of the senate votes by trying to entice him with her fancy pageant walking. :kitty-wink:

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Perhaps it's time to elect Republicans who would be willing to work with Democrats for the good of the American people?

I'm still confused about what's so freeing about being on the hook for thousands of dollars of medical expenses if you get sick or into an accident. Have these 'repeal Obamacare' people never received a $700 bill for lab work???

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But they don't necessarily want to work with Democrats. They had their chance in 2010 but they had their "secret" meeting to just oppose everything Obama tried to do. Also they have to pay back their donors in a sense by giving them those tax breaks. I like want to be hopeful and hope they care but they really haven't given a lot to work with!

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1 hour ago, AmericanRose said:

Perhaps it's time to elect Republicans who would be willing to work with Democrats for the good of the American people?

I'm still confused about what's so freeing about being on the hook for thousands of dollars of medical expenses if you get sick or into an accident. Have these 'repeal Obamacare' people never received a $700 bill for lab work???

Oh, perish the thought, @AmericanRose, the days of Repugs being interested in bipartisanship are long, long gone. It's too bad that they don't care about the American people, except for wealthy males.

And, I agree with you about the expenses. I have multiple medical conditions. Not only are my copays fairly reasonable, I don't have to panic that I'll hit a yearly or lifetime maximum and that my employer will decide to stop offering insurance as a cost-cutting measure. People always think something couldn't happen to them. One of my coworkers, who is based in Texas, and is an outspoken Repug, just was diagnosed with stage four lymphoma. He admitted to me privately that he is grateful for our insurance. I don't like kicking someone when they're down, but I asked if he contacted Cruz and Cornyn to push them to not repeal the ACA. He said he hadn't even thought about it, but planned to call. This was about a week ago. I know his call wouldn't change either mind, but I was glad that someone realized the ACA is a good thing.

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4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I saw something (sorry can't remember where) that showed a push to recall Lisa Murkowski and put Palin in her seat. Oh yeah, that is one of the worst ideas ever.

Can you imagine it? Sarah Palin takes the floor and prattles on for an hour with insane word salad. She'd be the expert on Putin being able to see  him from her house and all. 

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Good grief.

 

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