I sometimes peruse the partisan right multi-Reddits to see which way the wind blows on their planet, and I’m usually pretty disappointed with the stuff that bubbles up there.
Not this morning. Recriminations and gnashing of teeth all around. I suspect Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh will both have coronaries this afternoon. Curiously, I turned on Fox & Friends this morning, and they were talking about anything else but healthcare reform.
And it seemed like Mika Brzezinski took every opportunity to insert the word “failed” or “failure” into every sentence she spoke during the first few minutes of Morning Joe.
And the administration trying to extort a vote from her (Brianna Wu characterised it as an offer of pork, but that’s wrong, it was all stick and no carrot).
He could have prevented this entire shit show if he voted no the first day when he made his impassioned speech. So thank you, for what? Just doing the decent thing, finally? Ok, whatever.
True, but we should also recognize that there may be legitimate parts of the party platform that they believe in, and that the rest of that crap came along for the ride. I’m not the biggest fan of either one, but sometimes the best way to save something you believe in from corruption and degradation is to drive change from the inside.
I don’t get how McConnell is surprised by this. Everyone who paid attention knew that the attack on Planned Parenthood (which isn’t a very “skinny” approach to repeal, if you ask me) would rule out Collins and Murkowski. He could afford to lose two votes so he threw two out preemptively? Given that McCain is a random number generator, how can we be surprised by this outcome?
I’m also disinclined to give McCain any “decent human being” points because he treated this whole thing like a TV show during sweeps week:
Voting on whether to kick millions of people off of their health insurance, tank the private insurance market, and take a hatchet to Medicaid is not a show. I’m obviously delighted that this trash heap has finally been ground to a halt for a little while longer at 4th and inches, but I’m not going to thank McCain for voting against it, because he’s more interested in being the center of attention than whether or not the legislation is actually incredibly damaging garbage. I wouldn’t thank Rand Paul if he’d voted against it either just because it wasn’t atrocious enough for him.
Increasingly my opinion of McCain is just what you are suggesting - He’s basically just trying to get attention and being unpredictable in the way he votes is a way to do that. While Murkowski was a “no” because she didn’t want the stuff about defunding planned parenthood and Paul was a “no” on the repeal/replace bill because he thought it wasn’t in line with his libertarian nonsense, McCain seems to vote in whatever way will get him press coverage.
If I wanted to read all his actions (from voting to proceed, to voting yes on the bill he said he’d vote no on, to voting no here) as a Machiavellian plot to stymie efforts to mess up healthcare, I could read them that way. I don’t think he’s that deceptive or manipulative. I think he’s just an attention hog.
Those sour grapes. When he said he he wanted to hear ideas from the Dems I was like, “oh after the last 3 plus months icing them out of any role whatsoever, now you want their ideas?” What a fucking joke.
I think he IS an attention hog. He also has said he wants the bill to be put through the normal paces, not hidden from everyone and all this shadowy crap the rest of his gang is doing. So, he did score half a point for that one. But why has this taken 7 years to get them to debate the bill publicly, show the bill publicly, look for a 60 vote bill not a 51 vote bill? He could have done this years ago. So that’s why he only scores a half point in my book. Maybe even just a quarter point. Very small. We need right action, not all this showmanship. This is people’s lives at stake. This isn’t some chess game with points and half points and quarter points.
Stalled, not stopped. This thing keeps coming up. I don’t want to see Obamacare repealed, but the GOP is going to keep trying until they start paying a political price for it.
An open legislative process is the best way we have to force the sadists pushing these bills to stand up and acknowledge what they are pushing for.
This all points to how bankrupt the GOP ideology really is. The general public, and even corporations, are in favor of a more coherent national healthcare system and yet the GOP somehow spun the lie that the ACA was a leftist idea, branded it “Obamacare,” and convinced their supporters it was a sin against all that is good in the world, without giving a cogent explanation for why. When they were forced to actually spell out what their plan is (namely: make sure fewer people have access to affordable healthcare), it doesn’t fly. I don’t want to get too hopeful, but it seems like public opinion and journalism are the real heroes in this fight so far. I doubt these three senators would have voted this way without the constant pressure they’ve been subjected to.
