Republicans’ failure may cost them at the ballot box
Vulnerable and nothing to show
The Washington Post
The Republican Party’s seven-year quest to undo the Affordable Care Act culminated Friday in a humiliating failure to pass an unpopular bill, sparking questions about how steep the costs will be for its congressional majorities.
While lawmakers have not completely abandoned the effort, they are now confronting the consequences of their flop. Not only has it left the GOP in a precarious position heading into next year’s midterm elections, it has placed enormous pressure on the party to pass an ambitious and complex overhaul of federal taxes.
Strategists argued for months that Republicans risked more by not acting and alienating their conservative base than by passing an unpopular repeal bill that could turn off swing voters. They now live in the worst of both worlds — with nothing to show for seven years of campaign promises, even though dozens of vulnerable lawmakers cast votes that could leave them exposed to attacks from Democrats.
“This is an epic failure by congressional Republicans,” said Tim Phillips, president of the conservative Koch network group Americans for Prosperity. “But it’s time to pivot to tax reform. There’s no time to pout.”
In the moments after the a bare-bones repeal bill failed early Friday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it was “time to move on.” But there seemed to be little stomach afterward among Republicans on Capitol Hill for acknowledging outright failure on their top campaign promise.
Lawmakers did agree, however, that when they return to Washington after Labor Day, they must succeed in their rewrite of the tax code after seven months that have seen too many of their top agenda items untouched.
“We’ve asked the voters for a lot,” said Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio), who is leaving Congress after his current term to run for governor. “They’ve given us the House. They’ve given us the Senate. They’ve given us the presidency. It’s time to give them something back and get something done.”
Off the Hill, the collapse of the repeal effort has left conservative activists fuming about how the GOP could have flinched and pondering payback for the party establishment — particularly several moderate senators who voted for ACA repeal legislation when it had no chance of becoming law only to balk when it did.
In campaign after campaign since the ACA was enacted in 2010, GOP candidates used pledges to “repeal and replace Obamacare” to gain majorities in the House and Senate, and President Donald Trump promised to unravel the law as one of his first acts in office.
Instead, Republicans have continually failed to coalesce around an alternative — vividly demonstrated by the dramatic failure of the “skinny repeal” on the Senate floor early Friday morning. They appear trapped in the fallacy of sunk costs: Having invested so much political capital in the ACA’s repeal, they cannot possibly abandon it.
Numerous House lawmakers leaving a closeddoor Republican conference meeting hours after the Senate bill collapsed said that efforts to undo the increasingly popular health law would have to continue.
“I am disappointed and frustrated, but we should not give up,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declared.
The leader of an influential bloc of House conservatives, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., insisted a deal was still within reach and said he’d approached key senators. And while Mr. Trump said he would “let Obamacare implode,” he also urged senators on Twitter to jettison their filibuster rules in order to pass “really good things.”
But key figures warned Republicans to move on before the health morass sinks the rest of the party’s agenda — most importantly, the tax overhaul.
“Quarantine it,” said Josh Holmes, a GOP strategist and former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who coined the “repeal and replace” mantra in 2010. “You can let it destroy your entire agenda, and your entire party as a result of inaction by continuing to dwell on something that, frankly, they’ve proven unable to do.”
But conservative activists have been furious in the aftermath, and have cast about for ways to punish those they consider responsible.
The three Republican senators who cast the decisive votes on Friday — Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — are largely immune to immediate electoral consequences. Ms. Murkowski, who withstood public pressure from Mr. Trump, is less than a year into a six-year term; Mr. McCain, also reelected last year, is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer; and Ms. Collins, who has not faced a serious primary threat since 1996, next stands for reelection in 2020 and is considering a run for governor next year.
But activists are still angry that several other Republican senators — including, Dean Heller, Nevada, Lamar Alexander, Tenn., Shelley Moore Capito, W.Va., and Rob Portman, Ohio, as well as Mr. McCain and Ms. Murkowski — voted for an ACA repeal measure in 2015, when former President Barack Obama was certain to veto it, but opposed an almost identical measure this week knowing Mr. Trump could sign it into law.