Whiney tirade after the vote. I thought he was going to bust out bawling. I don't think he's so talented he can fake it.

They knew it was about as popular as a zit in a prom queens face, but they had to vote for it because that's all they've talked about for 7 years.

If it had passed they'd have had 16 - 32 million extremely pissed off voters at the next election. This way, they're all on record as having held the vote (s) to get rid of Obamacare thereby placating their rabid base, without having to pay the political consequence of actually throwing millions of voters off their healthcare plans...

If McConnell wanted this to fail, he sure had a funny way of going about it. He could have left McCain in Arizona. He could have closed the vote on the floor as soon as all 100 votes were in. He could have done a skabillion other things and the bill would have quite surely died without all the drama of the 51-49 loss. It's never, ever good for the guy running the place to get a black-eye loss like this.

And now, he's made 100% sure that the Republicans who stood with him on the vote get to explain themselves to their constituents for the next 15 months. This was one of those marquee votes that people will be remembering for a long time.

i agree that it would have been a disaster for them for it to pass.

however, i think mcturtle wanted to show his "leadership" by getting the bill to pass.
then he would move on to the next problem (well, right after they cut taxes for the rich), which is that health care is now in shambles thanks to their stupid repeal law.
and he would "show leadership" by passing some other fix to that problem. what that fix is he doesn't know, doesn't care.

McConnell is a reptilian exemplar of the worst of politics, but he's shrewd and he must have known that passing this bill would devastate them in the midterms. Politically, how this played out is the best the Republicans could salvage from a bad situation. Their base can feel that they made an all out effort to do away with Obama's socialism and they don't have to face the consequences of being responsible for the result.

As O'Donnell said, they've effectively moved the dead cat off their porch and I seriously doubt that they will sincerely try to fix some of the gaps in Obamacare. They will continue to sabotage it and claim in the midterms that people need to elect more Republicans to get it fixed.

Turtle's crocodile tears last night don't convince me of his sincerity. I do think he's skilled and manipulative enough to play some serious 3 dimensional chess.

times and he kept repeating himself. He was exhausted, beyond angry, and I think almost broke down.

He was visibly emotional - I've never seen him emotional in anyway

He wanted this to pass to claim a victory and more importantly to him, destroy Obama's legacy and make him a "failure" that haunt's any future black President.

He's a sick SOB.

I wouldn't be surprised if he had a deal with Ryan where "they go to conference" and Ryan comes out and says they bill is fine the way it is and passes it. Screwing over any GOP Senators that were assured the bill would be made "right" for them. They could bitch to Mitch, but he would just blame Ryan...and what does it matter, he figures they are goners anyway. He just wanted to get what HE wanted while he could.

McCain probably had an in somewhere and caught wind of it. Decided to save his legacy and possibly save a few of his buddies. Plus screw over Dump and his oft political rival, Mitch.

O'Donnell could be right. But I think it's a case of coincidence. I do think McTurtle wanted something, any kind of Obamacare repeal to pass. He probably bought off Capito and was frustrated at his inability to do anything with McCain.

However, the bill's failure does save Republican seats -- that is a fact. The great irony of this whole repeal/replace drama was if it had actually passed, its passage would have effectively handed Congress back to the Democrats after the 2018 elections and we'd be looking at "Speaker Pelosi" (as Joe Scar put it).

lol. He was desperate to pass this. Not many GOP Senators up in mid-terms anyway, and most are from bright red states.

is part of the Sting.