What Doug Jones' Win Means for the GOP Agenda in Congress

The stunning upset victory of Democrat Doug Jones over Roy Moore in Alabama's special election on Tuesday is being parsed by pundits and politicians alike, but the results don't seem to have changed much for Republicans at the hyper-partisan U.S. Capitol.

On Wednesday, GOP lawmakers carried on with business as usual as they reached another closed-door deal on their bill to overhaul the tax code, which now includes even steeper tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. But Democrats are warning them there will be more electoral consequences to come if they don't tap the breaks on their agenda.

"Today we Senate Democrats are calling on Mitch McConnell to hit pause on the tax bill and not hold the final vote until Doug Jones is sworn into the Senate," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. "It would be wrong for Senate Republicans to jam through this tax bill without giving the newly elected senator from Alabama the opportunity to cast his vote."

The Alabama race comes on the heels of this November's off-year elections, during which Republicans witnessed stunning defeats in Virginia and New Jersey: Democrats won gubernatorial races and captured many suburban legislative districts that in recent elections have been Republican strongholds.

Still, GOP leaders don't think their party is facing the anti-Trump wave that Democrats are predicting, so they're brushing aside calls to change directions and delay the tax vote until the new year.

"That's pretty laughable," Sen. John Cornyn, the number-two Republican in the Senate, tells Rolling Stone. "They've basically checked out of the process form the very beginning, and we've invited them to join us, but now we're at the one-yard line and they want us to wait? That just makes no sense."

By losing a reliable Republican vote from the South, the GOP's chances of repealing and replacing Obamacare next year have diminished. Moore's defeat also imperils the president's new call for his party to move on to welfare reform ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

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