POINT COUNTERPOINT
My friend Gina directs my attention to the article linked below, which posits that Republicans actually want their health care plan to fail. Here are my thoughts, pro and con.
Republicans intended their Obamacare replacement to fail because:
1. It’s a terrible bill. But since when did that deter Republicans?
2. They were desperate to prove that they weren’t bluffing all these years, even if the plan they conjured out of smoke, mirrors, and Ayn Rand-inspired fantasies of revenge against the undeserving poor didn’t pass either the laugh test or the smell test. Certainly elements of truth here, but this smacks of an ex post facto excuse, rather than a real strategy.
3. They’ve decided that it’s better to keep Obamacare and find ways to sabotage it, so that it will be less popular the next time the granny-starvers put their own plan forward. Not out of the question, but as above, it sounds like a salvage operation rather than the original plan.
4. They’re fiendishly clever strategists playing a long game that mere mortals like us can’t hope to understand.
Republicans did not intend their Obamacare replacement to fail because:
1. They – and especially philosopher king Paul Ryan – are going to look pretty foolish if they withdraw the plan after all the subterfuge and parliamentary maneuvering they went through to put it forward.
2. The Ryan plan will fail, if it fails, because of Republican opposition. Democrats don’t have the votes by themselves to stop it. It’s hard to believe that Ryan and McConnell wanted to precipitate a civil war within their own ranks.
3. Ryan and other Congressional backers of the plan have gone to some length to persuade Donald Trump to support the plan, which contains elements directly contrary to his campaign pledges. Trump clearly has no idea what’s in the plan, but he’s using some of his own political capital to persuade skeptical Republicans to support it. Congressional Republicans have bent over backwards to avoid antagonizing Trump so far. Would they really ratfuck him over this?
4. Republicans really are that stupid.