At least for now, it appears that the die is cast. Thursday night Paul Ryan is going to roll the dice and bring his health care wrecking ball bill up for a vote. This is a total crap shoot on several levels, not only for Ryan, but for Trump as well. First, depending on whose whip count you’re looking at, the bill can do anything from pass by a small margin to fail by double digit votes. If it fails, it is a stunning blow, not only for Paul Ryan, but also for Hair Furor, who has lobbied hard for this blivet.
Let’s just say that there is reason to question any confidence the GOP has in their whip count to success. The GOP has a rather spotty history of being accurate in their vote counting in the past. A few years ago, John Boehner looked like an incompetent idiot when he brought up back to back high profile bills that were shot down on floor votes even though he had the majority. If this happens to Ryan, he may well be on the way down, the Freedom Caucus emboldened by their win over him.
Eddie Munster knows that this bill is in deep kimchi. If your bill is a winner, you don’t have to make large scale, expensive changes to it about 72 hours before the vote to try to gain support for it. And in Ryan’s case, it’s like trying to walk between raindrops, any adjustments made to woo one faction is just going to piss off another faction. This turns into a zero sum game, you pick up 15 votes by making a change, but at the same time you lose 15 others from a different wing. The simple fact of the matter is that this is a terrible bill, and at this point, it really doesn’t matter what color of lipstick you put on this pig, everybody can smell it.
Trump should be the great savior here. After all, he can bring strong men quivering to their knees with a single tweet. Don’t even think about having him come to your district to dump shit over your head in a primary. Except. There are two facts that will give legislators pause here. One is the fact that right now Trump is mired at a 37% popularity rating, he is bleeding support from people who voted for him for other reasons than being true Trumpaholics. Second, whether they have braved the wilds of a town hall meeting in their district, or ducked them like the chickens they are, they have been exposed to the mood and feelings of their constituents, especially on this health care issue. Who do they fear more, their voters, or a petulant man-child whose popularity is rapidly sinking towards the level of congress itself?
From where I’m sitting (on my fat dead ass), Trump has the most to lose here. His entire narcissistic worldview depends on him being all powerful, and never beaten. His reign so far has been one Waterloo after another for him, he needs this win. If he gets his executive ass handed to him by a bunch of pipsqueak upstarts in the House, it only emboldens them further on other initiatives he wants to push, and weakens Ryan to assist him with it in the caucus.
It is also worth considering the fact that Trump needs to come through for the GOP to enact their dream destruction. The chips are piling up against Trump, popularity, trustworthiness, the entire country now knows his campaign, and possibly WH advisors are being investigated for Russian collusion in the campaign, and possibly afterwards. His behavior is becoming more and more erratic, I think this is why Ivanka is moving into the west wing, to try to keep him on a tether. If Trump can’t help ram through the agenda, at what point does GOP leadership decide to pull the plug on this loser, either through impeachment, or by pressing Pence to pull the trigger on the 25th amendment? This is their one shot at this, they can’t waste it if Trump can’t come through.
If this bill fails, whether it is in the House or the Senate, there is one clear winner. It is the resistance, Indivisible, and all of the millions of citizens who rose up as one to remind their legislators exactly who really holds the power in this democracy. If they can put this scalp on their belt, the rest of the GOP legislative agenda is in danger. Medicare reform, meals on wheels, the budget, the pressure that works for one issue can work for any of them. GOP legislators will be torn between enacting all of their wildest dreams, at the possible expense of a costly primary at home, or even worse, a defeat at the ballot box in November. A loss could change the trajectory of the next 20 months of this legislative agenda until the 2018 midterms.
So I repeat myself. Mark you calendars for Thursday night, it’s going to be must see. If this thing bombs, it will only empower and grow the Indivisible movement, and the grassroots uprising, nothing breeds success like success. And if Thursday rolls around and Ryan pulls the bill from a vote, it’s another defeat. It would be hard to see how he can put the bill back on the floor with more tweaking, the opinions are pretty much baked in on this thing, he’ll have to start from scratch, and good luck with that. Either way, the fact that as a grassroots we have wreaked so much havoc on the thought processes of GOP lawmakers is sewing the seeds for a very good 2018, no matter what position they take they will leave rocks that they can be hit over the head with by their opponents in the long run. Keep punching, and keep the faith.