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Senate healthcare repeal bill fails - Collins, Murkowski, and McCain voted no

Z

zashga

Member
McCain redeemed when we least expected it. After Trump and senate Republicans spent the whole week lionizing him for returning to vote after actual brain surgery, he actually votes his conscience.

Bravo, you absolute maverick. I knew you had it in you.
 
S

SDBurton

World's #1 Cosmonaut Enthusiast
Dhx said:
McCain said in his opening statement coming back that he would not vote for the damn thing without major modifications.

He was good on his word.

Those that went to the depths of the toilet to attack a man with likely less than a year to live should take a pause, if nothing more.
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I was about to post something similar but I'm tired and you beat me to the punch, so thank you.
 
C

Cuburt

Member
cameron said:
Nfs8LeK.gif
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Here's a close up of McConnell's reaction in real-time:
4T4BevL.gif
 
R

ratcliffja

Member
Ashodin said:
I'm fully inclined to believe McCain voted yes on the first vote just to turn around and NOPE on this one.
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I think it was because he knew it wouldn't pass and he wanted to be consistent with his plan of repeal and replace, even if the latter part wasn't guaranteed. He could at least create the illusion of going along with his previous assertions.
 
T

Tinfoilhatsron

Banned
RC0101 said:
I am amazed. Thanks to the Medicaid expansion my daughter will have a shot at leading a "normal" life where as if it was never put in place she would have been lost. We no longer need the expansion personally but I was sick to my stomach thinking of anyone else going through what I went through 5 years ago and having no hope.

I called all three R Senators and thanked them for their no votes.
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High five man! I'm extremely thankful for the Medicaid expansion too. Props given where they're due to McCain I really thought he would bail on us. Man must have a sense of drama.

But the fight ain't over yet. Unfortunently.
 
S

Sianos

Member
Thank you to moderate darlings Collins and Murkowsky for being among the handful of actual moderate Republicans in the country. They've saved millions of lives tonight.

And it looks like McCain did indeed have the Christmas Carol "Ghost of Christmas Future" moment I had become so disillusioned towards after the MTP vote. The Maverick finally lived up to his namesake, and I'm very happy to have been proven wrong.
 
N

Not

Banned
It's almost like McCain remembered what it was like to be a politician before McConnell was around.
 
N

NESpowerhouse

Perhaps he's wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane.
Tinfoilhatsron said:
Well then I do eat my words. Fully eat my crow. With BBQ Sauce.

But what the fuck at saying yes to opening the bill up for debate. I don't fucking get you McCain. You wasted valuable hours for what? To troll Trump? It can't be that petty...

Right?
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Trump v. McCain: Locked in a battle of 4D chess against one another. It's keikaku vs keikaku. This is truly some Code Geass shit.
 
T

Taelus

Member
Don't thank the Republicans who voted no. Thank the disabled people and other activists who worked tirelessly to protest this bill. Without them, those senators likely would've voted for it. They're the real heroes.
 
T

Tinfoilhatsron

Banned
Deaf Spacker said:
Can someone explain to this Brit what the fuck happened?
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As I understand it:
McCain basically trolled the entire GOP after voting yes the first time to open the bill up for discussion. He voted no right now against the 'Skinny' repeal. An insult to Herr Trump. Obamacare will be left entact for now.
 
D

dofry

That's "Dr." dofry to you.
Thanks for the replies.

How difficult would it be to offer you guys a universal healthcare system? Or is the obstruction to it mainly because some people do not want to care for others health? Each to their own and all that?
 
M

marcbret87

Member
Is there a way this bill can be resurrected somehow? It's not the first (or the second or third for that matter) time the GoP's efforts suffer "a major blow" only for the damn thing to resurface a few days/weeks later in a new form. So yeah, it's good McCain finally came through in the clutch, but...
 
S

Steel

Banned
dofry said:
Thanks for the replies.

How difficult would it be to offer you guys a universal healthcare system? Or is the obstruction to it mainly because some people do not want to care for others health? Each to their own and all that?
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Republicans want nothing to do with that. At all.

Zolo said:
Saying this moreso due to McConnell's speech and Trump's tweet about just letting Obamacare die.
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Trump has been saying let Obamacare die for months. McConnell has had sad turtle speeches with every failure(though this was the best one).
 
T

The Silver

Member
Taelus said:
Don't thank the Republicans who voted no. Thank the disabled people and other activists who worked tirelessly to protest this bill. Without them, those senators likely would've voted for it. They're the real heroes.
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I don't think thanks is a zero sum game.
 
L

LordCanti

Member
He finally did it.

I still don't know how many insurers will be left in my area for next year (or the year after) but at least the Turtle wasn't allowed to send it into an even faster death spiral.
 
R

RC0101

Member
Taelus said:
Don't thank the Republicans who voted no. Thank the disabled people and other activists who worked tirelessly to protest this bill. Without them, those senators likely would've voted for it. They're the real heroes.
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If you have their contact info I would gladly thank them. I will also thank the Democrats and the three Republicans
 
N

Nerokis

Member
Shauni said:
Yeah, like I said, that first paragraph is solid. Throws the shade at the bill, and not so subtly at McConnell and Ryan. But that second one is straight garbage. It may be a 'call for bipartisanship' on some level, but it's surrounded by bullshit. So, two hits, and a miss for the McCain today. At least one of his hits managed to be a big one.
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God, I couldn't disagree more with this interpretation of that second paragraph.

For one, context matters. McCain voted no, in part, with the hope that killing the bill would help produce a transition from this Republican-exclusive process to one in which normal decorum rules again. That requires speaking to Republicans directly, and creating a case for returning to normal decorum that considers them; using Obamacare as a foil does this. How his precise method of turning Obamacare into a foil impacts the narrative around its passage doesn't really matter much at all.

Secondly, it's not bullshit. That Obamacare was passed along party lines, passed even when it was deeply unpopular (this unpopularity culminating in a Scott Brown taking Ted Kennedy's seat), and passed using parliamentary maneuvers after Democrats lost their supermajority. . .you may disagree, but emphasizing those things versus the stretch of time that it sat in the Finance Committee and wooing Olympia Snowe was a huge focus doesn't constitute bullshit.

Plus, it's just true that the way Obamacare was passed turned out to be a massive shortcoming of the legislation. Many have acknowledged this, even without narrative purposes. That it was so unpopular and so polarizing from the outset meant it was uniquely vulnerable, and also meant that there was much less room to take proper care of it after implementation began and issues inevitably arose.

So unless you're attaching an unusual amount of weight to protecting the narrative around Obamacare's passage, I don't see where the "straight garbage" description of the second paragraph of McCain's statement comes from. Obviously there's no equivalence between the process of how it was passed and the past ~6 months, but the narrative McCain expressed has existed for as long as Obamacare itself, and it isn't baseless.
 
M

MThanded

I Was There! Official L Receiver 2/12/2016
This is why it's no good to have terribly low approval ratings. Harder to whip the votes if people's constituents dislike the leader of your party.
 
N

Nexas

Member
What a stressful fucking night this was, but things turned out better than expected. The best part of this whole fucking fiasco is we now have the entire Republican party on record in favor of this dumpster fire of a bill. This is great ammo for the mid-terms as Dems can point to this and say "these assholes voted to reduce coverage and raise your premiums."
 
N

NullPointer

Member
BBC said:
The arc of history is long, but it bends towards revenge.

Just over two years after candidate Donald Trump mocked John McCain's Vietnam War record, noting that he prefers heroes "who weren't captured", the Arizona senator stuck a dagger in President Trump's healthcare reform plans.

There were gasps when Mr McCain, after being furiously lobbied by Vice-President Mike Pence, joined two other Republican senators in voting against the so-called "skinny" repeal plan, considered the bare minimum Senate Republicans could agree on.

Instead of a big step toward becoming law - either in its skinny form or after further negotiations with the House of Representatives - the future of Obamacare repeal has been thrown into doubt.

The reality is, for now, there is no minimum level of change on which Senate Republicans can agree. They either have to work with Democrats or resign themselves to stalemate and move on to other topics, like taxes or infrastructure spending.

It will take some time for the enormity of this late-night Senate drama to sink in. No one really expected Mr McCain to be the decisive vote, but the man who once had a reputation as a Republican "maverick", now facing a dire brain cancer diagnosis, had at least one more surprise in his pocket.
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BBC: US healthcare: Senate 'skinny repeal' bill fails
 
R

Roboculus

Member
Mccain treating this whole thing like a WWE pay-per-view is real fucked up. Then again, it was also a spectacular fuck you to McConnell so I guess that slightly makes up for it.

I ain't calling him no hero but he ultimately did the right thing so I"ll give him credit for that (Collins and Murkowski are still the real heroes).
 
A

antonz

Member
I am fairly certain if McCain has voted no the first time around it would have blocked the reconciliation process from beginning which means the Republicans could have tried again at anytime. The Bill advancing to Reconciliation and being voted down effectively killed any chance for the bill as reconciliation can only be done once a year.
 
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