What a goatfuck. I have little to say. I am in favor of neither Obamacare or whatever the fuck Ryancare/Trumpcare would turn out to be (I'm strongly in favor of single payer), but yeah, goatfucking is abundant here. It's symptomatic of the failures of the Republican party in general; although the Democrat party is hardly doing any better these days. Both are really circling the drain, as is our whole political system, really; this is just one manifestation. The vast majority of people, and probably a considerable number of the Congress members in question, don't really understand what the fuck is going on and what changes are really getting put into place (there's been more emphasis in the media, etc. about what's
not being changed), although the numbers projected about the uninsured, etc. are not looking good; the #1 agenda should of course be dealing with the medical and pharmaceutical lobbies, but that shit isn't going to happen. So all of this is just a whole lot of nonsense, a trainwreck.
And it does not bode well for Trump, at all, and his whole pitch of "making deals," etc., and the various
faux pas diplomatically and otherwise; we're barely into the first year and already reëlection, if not even talking about finishing out the term without some kind of major constitutional crisis not seen since Nixon, is not looking good for him at all.
What he needs, of course, is a war. That's always been a good way to get Americans behind their president. That's a scary prospect for the future; but now, in basically every domestic battle he's fighting now, he's winding up on the losing end, and there's really nothing to say about him and his appointees is other than
amateurism or
dilletantism. Although, personally, I'd rather a government full of imbeciles and incompetents than one full of competent and very, very wicked and deeply entrenched in the system political operatives. Amateurism in politics is not new but domestic and international politics is so much more complex now. What I wonder, in the nearish term future (a decade or so) is whether Trump's goatfucking will lead to more and more technocrats running or winning, or if amateurism is the new thing, what with social media and all that shit.
But anyway, on topic…
From
the Atlantic (the whole thing is worth a read)—
“This was absolutely a bad decision to move this type of bill this early.”
Trump had initially insisted that Republicans hold a vote on the bill regardless of the outcome, wanting to see which members would defy him. He dispatched his top lieutenants to Capitol Hill on Wednesday night to urge rank-and-file lawmakers to fall in line, ending negotiations with the party’s right and left flank on further changes to the bill. But few members were persuaded, and by Friday, party leaders in the House wanted to spare their members from having to cast a vote in favor of an unpopular bill that would not become law. At a hastily arranged meeting in the Capitol basement, Ryan told Republicans he had called off the vote and said Trump was on board with the decision. Minutes later, stone-faced lawmakers left the meeting and prepared to head back to their districts for the weekend. One Republican staffer was in tears as she exited the room.
While conservative members of the Freedom Caucus withheld their support despite winning a last-minute amendment to broaden the repeal, it was the defection of more moderate and electorally vulnerable members that sealed its fate. Republicans could afford to lose no more than 22 votes to achieve a majority, and in a statement at the White House Friday, Trump estimated that they were 10 to 15 votes short. In perhaps the most ominous sign for the GOP leadership, the chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, announced he would oppose the bill on Thursday morning. In previous generations, it would be unheard of for a top committee chairman to oppose party leaders on such a major vote. Representatives Barbara Comstock of Virginia and David Joyce of Ohio followed suit about an hour later, sapping momentum from the effort less than a day after Trump delivered his ultimatum to Republicans to pass his bill or see Obamacare live on.
“We need to start having victories as a party.”
The White House and GOP leaders searched for votes wherever they could, but there were few lawmakers willing to suddenly support a bill they had already publicly denounced. Representative Walter Jones of North Carolina, a frequent dissenter in the party, said he waved off a last-minute call from the office of Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the party whip. “I said, ‘Let me tell you: I don’t want to waste his time,’” Jones told reporters. “I don’t see anybody that was a no yesterday changing their vote.” He then ripped into the proposal and the leadership’s insistence that it pass. “This was absolutely a bad decision to move this type of bill this early,” Jones said.
Defeat on the floor dealt Trump a major blow early in his presidency, but its implications were far more serious for the Republican Party as a whole. Handed unified control of the federal government for only the third time since World War II, the modern GOP was unable to overcome its internecine fights to enact a key part of its policy agenda. The president now wants to move on to a comprehensive overhaul of the tax code, but insiders on Capitol Hill have long believed that project will be an even heavier lift than health care.
And this is a hell of a thing, too—
the Donald Himself callls a Washington Post reporter to say that the health care bill is dead.


