As Donald Trump has made clear in typically mature fashion—calling them “total quitters”—he wants Senate Republicans to keep banging their head against repealing Obamacare until they have passed some bill, any bill at all, so that he can call it a win. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn’t seem eager to lose publicly again, and many Republican senators find the idea of taking another unpopular vote on a bill they don’t have an obvious way to pass even less fun than the idea of being insulted on Twitter by Donald Trump.
“Do I think we should stay on health care until we get it done? I think it’s time to move on to something else. Come back to health care when we've had more time to get beyond the moment we’re in and see if we can’t put some wins on the board,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of GOP leadership. “Tax reform, infrastructure are the kinds of things we ought to be looking at.”
Pressed to respond to Trump’s Twitter tirade against the Senate GOP, Blunt said: “What do you want me to say about that? Obviously we didn’t give up and we didn’t quit. We can come back to this at another time and I’m sure we will.”
“The moment we’re in” being a moment when the public is watching and they can’t get 51 votes, even if Trump can’t quite wrap his head around that reality.
But there are two warnings buried in Blunt’s words. First, “We can come back to this at another time and I’m sure we will.” Even if Trump isn’t getting the immediate win he wants, that doesn’t mean your health care is safe from Republican harm for the long term. Second, “Tax reform, infrastructure” translates to “big tax breaks for rich people (and a few tiny ones for middle class people to help sell the plan) paid for by slashing needed services” and “infrastructure,” in the hands of these Republicans, means a lot of privatization. Rather than investing in America, Republicans want to sell off chunks of it.
But we know that. As long as Republicans hold Congress and the White House, there will always be another effort to make rich people richer at the expense of the rest of us. We should still savor our wins when we can, and use them to build energy for the next fight.