The earthquake that was a narrow win for a Republican in one of the reddest congressional districts in the nation apparently didn't faze popular vote loser Donald Trump. That could be because he is in total denial about what that race portends for Republicans, or his people are lying to him, or because he just doesn't understand how any of this works.
Let's go with that last one.
Having a floor vote scheduled for a bill—after ramming it through committee without anyone having a chance to read it, or the Congressional Budget Office to score it—and then having to pull it right before the scheduled vote because you can't get enough of your own party members to vote for it? That's pretty much the definition of failure. But it is true that Trump and the Freedom Caucus are still "negotiating" Zombie Trumpcare, apparently thinking there's still life in this thing.
Just as a reminder what the bill that drove moderate Republicans in the House away and makes it nearly impossible to pass in the Senate would do: 24 million people uninsured in the next decade; the destruction of Medicaid; the end of protections for people with pre-existing conditions. And that's not the whole of it!
And as of now, Trump's flogging the thing. He says "his efforts on health care are 'doing very well' and that he still wants a bill passed before tackling tax reform." Not just any tax reform: "We have to do health care first to pick up additional money so that we get great tax reform. So we're going to have a phenomenal tax reform, but I have to do health care first." Phenomenal tax reform, made possible by gutting Medicaid. Something else that's not going to ever go well with the Senate.
And he thinks it's going along swimmingly. Trump and his Freedom Caucus buddy Mark Meadows (R-NC) are going to be in for an ugly surprise when they start trying to round up votes from all those Republicans in less safe districts than Kansas's 4th.
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