MCCAIN GAMBIT PAYS OFF. SAVES MANY LIVES. Hear Me Out.
Looking back the 1st MCCain vote to move to debate makes sense. If that fails the 3 bills that came under consideration are still out there and McConnell can keep going back to the debate question. That means that the three bills still have some life.
Now with the debate on the bills and the votes the gamble is that one of those bills will pass. The 1st two bad bills from the House and the Senate have already lost a vote and the prospect are is that they will fail again. No guarantee but all bets are against them.
The last bill the "skinny" bill is the one most likely to pass and it is a Trojan horse designed to go to conference committee where it is possible to put out something really totally bad. It is a good bet that Ryan is lying to the Senators and it is a set up by McConnel to game his own Senators and get ACA repeal and replace through in a sneaky way.
McConnell then has time to bribe, cajole, manipulate and do whatever to get the "conference" result into law. He is still after the whole hog. He can intimidate his caucus in so many devious ways.
So whether by design or accident McCain is in the cat bird seat. He probably knew the Collins and Murkowsky would never budge on their no votes. So now his is in a position to kill off everything and stick it to McConnell and Trump. And he can do it in a dramatic way.
That "no" vote explodes all three bills and now McConnell and Ryan have to come up with something entirely new. The problem is that almost all of the permutations they had to use were in ALL those bills in one form or another.
Now they are really back to square one with really no where to go. It will really be hard now to do a repeal bill.
McCain in his 1st vote speech warned them about their process. And they went in anyway and did what he said they should not do.
Now I am not a McCain fan. But I believe that what he did was the best way to scuttle the game in the end.
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