The former GOP leader in the House talked to the Washingtonian’s Elaina Plott and conceded that his Republican Party is in a tough spot – parts of the conservative base expect the party to repeal the ACA, because that’s what they were promised – in part because of promises he and his colleagues made that they never intended to keep.
Asked if he feels partly responsible for their current predicament, Cantor is unequivocal. “Oh,” he says, “100 percent.”
He goes further: “To give the impression that if Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, that we could do that when Obama was still in office….” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. “I never believed it.”
He says he wasn’t the only one aware of the charade: “We sort of all got what was going on, that there was this disconnect in terms of communication, because no one wanted to take the time out in the general public to even think about ‘Wait a minute – that can’t happen.’ ” But, he adds, “if you’ve got that anger working for you, you’re gonna let it be.”
In context, when Cantor says he and his party felt the need to “let it be,” he means that Republicans fed a bunch of nonsense to their own voters, then exploited their anger for electoral gain with no intention of following through.
Cantor and his colleagues, in other words, played their base for fools – because they thought it’d help them win some elections, which it did.
I didn’t really expect the former House Majority Leader to admit that he helped oversee a cynical multi-year charade, but it’s good to see Cantor coming clean now.
I’m thankful for ALL 48 Democratic Senators and Republican Senators Collins, McCain and Murkowski. They saved millions of lives and ALL deserve the credit for doing what is right.
I was having the feeling that soon a number of their feet were going to be feeling those self inflicted gunshot wounds. sure enough, suddenly finding themselves between the hard brick wall of the voters and the Rock of being supportive of Trump. I still think that the real solution is that every Government official including the President has to have the same insurance as the American people.
Clearly, democrats serve the public interest and the common good, i.e., the people, and republicans serve corporations and the wealthiest 1%. Why in the world are the vast majority in the Republican Party neither wealthy nor corporate officers? Can it be they are the poorly educated, the gun owners, the religous right, the farmers, and the military? Why else?
The bottom line for Axios AM readers, from David Nather, Axios health care editor, and co-author with Tom Daschle of the 2010 book, “Getting It Done: How Obama and Congress Finally Broke the Stalemate to Make Way for Health Care Reform”:
— This is not the end of the battle over the Affordable Care Act. It’s just the end of seven years of Republican promises that they could wipe it away and start over.
— This is not President Trump’s failure, or Mitch McConnell’s, or Paul Ryan’s. It’s a collective failure — because Republicans had seven years to decide what should come after repeal, and they couldn’t get on the same page.
— The fate of the ACA is now in the hands of Trump and Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price, who are so vested in their attacks on the law that they have no interest in helping it succeed.
It’s now up to bipartisan teams like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — who have proven they can work together — to come up with smaller fixes to stabilize the markets. And they may have to force their leadership, and Trump, to swallow them.
Even tho Trump and Price can still do much damage to Obamacare and further destabilize the marketplaces, Congress has themselves in between a rock and a hard place.
The Senate can only consider one budget reconciliation bill per topic per year. Of course, if the bill dies in committee and never comes to an official vote, it doesn’t count — which is why they’ve been able to keep hammering away at the issue.
This bill, though, was allowed to come to the Senate floor, because the Republicans thought they’d secured the votes. Collins, Murkowski and the Democrats would vote no, everyone else would vote yes, and Pence would break the tie.
And then McCain completely screwed them. And it was almost certainly a calculated move; he voted to allow the bill to come to the floor. Had McCain allowed it to die in committee, McConnell could have come back with yet another repeal bill; but he let it come to a vote, and now they can’t consider another budget reconciliation bill on healthcare for the rest of the fiscal year.
The Senate needs 60 votes to pass any kind of healthcare reform now.
So now they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Either they concede defeat on the issue and try again later (causing a big, unpopular stink that could damage elections if they try it before the midterms, or risking losing the slim majority they already have if they wait) or they actually sit down with the democrats like adults and write a halfway decent healthcare bill.
And this is precisely why Trump will NEVER understand how Congress works because he does not know – nor does he care (?) – to educate himself on how the sausage gets made – wasn’t that something President Obama always referred to about how Congress works?
But Trump will simply get on Twitter or have himself another Pep Rally to stoke his hard core supporters that the Washington Swamp is just out to stop him from doing what God wants him to do – to Make America Great Again;.
But this time – if Trump follows through on his threat he tweeted today – to withhold Obamacare payments – what will that do to those millions of Americans need health insurance.
And especially to those health insurance corporations who are salivating at the idea of all that government money just sitting there…….and they can’t get their hands on it.
Wow – Trump has shown how he does not know the basics of how our country was structured – let alone how the Congress works. But not only that – Trump will gleefully mock and demean the very protocols and procedures that a President needs to get things done.
This is what happens when the White House has turned into a reality t.v. show – where the constant chaos and drama is what people are more interested in – and Trump loves to put on a good show – doesn’t he?
PrairiePopulistsAndProgressives.net 
The former GOP leader in the House talked to the Washingtonian’s Elaina Plott and conceded that his Republican Party is in a tough spot – parts of the conservative base expect the party to repeal the ACA, because that’s what they were promised – in part because of promises he and his colleagues made that they never intended to keep.
Asked if he feels partly responsible for their current predicament, Cantor is unequivocal. “Oh,” he says, “100 percent.”
He goes further: “To give the impression that if Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, that we could do that when Obama was still in office….” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. “I never believed it.”
He says he wasn’t the only one aware of the charade: “We sort of all got what was going on, that there was this disconnect in terms of communication, because no one wanted to take the time out in the general public to even think about ‘Wait a minute – that can’t happen.’ ” But, he adds, “if you’ve got that anger working for you, you’re gonna let it be.”
In context, when Cantor says he and his party felt the need to “let it be,” he means that Republicans fed a bunch of nonsense to their own voters, then exploited their anger for electoral gain with no intention of following through.
Cantor and his colleagues, in other words, played their base for fools – because they thought it’d help them win some elections, which it did.
I didn’t really expect the former House Majority Leader to admit that he helped oversee a cynical multi-year charade, but it’s good to see Cantor coming clean now.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/cantor-comes-clean-admits-he-didnt-believe-his-own-aca-rhetoric
I’m thankful for ALL 48 Democratic Senators and Republican Senators Collins, McCain and Murkowski. They saved millions of lives and ALL deserve the credit for doing what is right.
I was having the feeling that soon a number of their feet were going to be feeling those self inflicted gunshot wounds. sure enough, suddenly finding themselves between the hard brick wall of the voters and the Rock of being supportive of Trump. I still think that the real solution is that every Government official including the President has to have the same insurance as the American people.
Clearly, democrats serve the public interest and the common good, i.e., the people, and republicans serve corporations and the wealthiest 1%. Why in the world are the vast majority in the Republican Party neither wealthy nor corporate officers? Can it be they are the poorly educated, the gun owners, the religous right, the farmers, and the military? Why else?
The bottom line for Axios AM readers, from David Nather, Axios health care editor, and co-author with Tom Daschle of the 2010 book, “Getting It Done: How Obama and Congress Finally Broke the Stalemate to Make Way for Health Care Reform”:
— This is not the end of the battle over the Affordable Care Act. It’s just the end of seven years of Republican promises that they could wipe it away and start over.
— This is not President Trump’s failure, or Mitch McConnell’s, or Paul Ryan’s. It’s a collective failure — because Republicans had seven years to decide what should come after repeal, and they couldn’t get on the same page.
— The fate of the ACA is now in the hands of Trump and Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price, who are so vested in their attacks on the law that they have no interest in helping it succeed.
It’s now up to bipartisan teams like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — who have proven they can work together — to come up with smaller fixes to stabilize the markets. And they may have to force their leadership, and Trump, to swallow them.
Even tho Trump and Price can still do much damage to Obamacare and further destabilize the marketplaces, Congress has themselves in between a rock and a hard place.
The Senate can only consider one budget reconciliation bill per topic per year. Of course, if the bill dies in committee and never comes to an official vote, it doesn’t count — which is why they’ve been able to keep hammering away at the issue.
This bill, though, was allowed to come to the Senate floor, because the Republicans thought they’d secured the votes. Collins, Murkowski and the Democrats would vote no, everyone else would vote yes, and Pence would break the tie.
And then McCain completely screwed them. And it was almost certainly a calculated move; he voted to allow the bill to come to the floor. Had McCain allowed it to die in committee, McConnell could have come back with yet another repeal bill; but he let it come to a vote, and now they can’t consider another budget reconciliation bill on healthcare for the rest of the fiscal year.
The Senate needs 60 votes to pass any kind of healthcare reform now.
So now they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Either they concede defeat on the issue and try again later (causing a big, unpopular stink that could damage elections if they try it before the midterms, or risking losing the slim majority they already have if they wait) or they actually sit down with the democrats like adults and write a halfway decent healthcare bill.
And this is precisely why Trump will NEVER understand how Congress works because he does not know – nor does he care (?) – to educate himself on how the sausage gets made – wasn’t that something President Obama always referred to about how Congress works?
But Trump will simply get on Twitter or have himself another Pep Rally to stoke his hard core supporters that the Washington Swamp is just out to stop him from doing what God wants him to do – to Make America Great Again;.
But this time – if Trump follows through on his threat he tweeted today – to withhold Obamacare payments – what will that do to those millions of Americans need health insurance.
And especially to those health insurance corporations who are salivating at the idea of all that government money just sitting there…….and they can’t get their hands on it.
Wow – Trump has shown how he does not know the basics of how our country was structured – let alone how the Congress works. But not only that – Trump will gleefully mock and demean the very protocols and procedures that a President needs to get things done.
This is what happens when the White House has turned into a reality t.v. show – where the constant chaos and drama is what people are more interested in – and Trump loves to put on a good show – doesn’t he?