They're doing a riverboat gamble. They're down about five votes in the House in one estimate. Webster is a yes (as I predicted). Fuller thinks it is a jump ball.
I'm skeptical that Issa, Curbelo, Coffman, and the other potential no votes I listed are actually going to walk the plank. Maybe they will but I am skeptical. David Young was a no but is now a maybe.
The thing I keep thinking about is why would House Republicans vote tomorrow to pass the bill when they know the Senate will be vastly more moderate and change it substantially? And why would they want to have that on their records in 2018 as they run again? The midterms may be older and whiter but they're also a midterm where Trump is at the 40s.
The attack ads write themselves. I think they're so jammed right now between the activists and the electorate that they seriously are doing jump ball without a CBO record. Which may in fact bite them in the arse.
The question to me, why risk it all? Why not kill the bill and repair ObamaCare, like a lot of other center right parties have done and take the credit? Repair it, move it to rhe right, and then claim credit?
The biggest reality is that this is a temporary 10 year bill. Meaning in ten ears they'll have to hope a Democratic White House isn't in place and that one chamber isn't in Democratic hands barring that. Given we almost certainly will have a Democratic White House by 2025 at the latest thats optimistic. That assumes no crisis.
I haven't even pointed out that the ACA has helped with the debt crisis coming in. So we'll see.
In other words the long term upside to fixing Obamacare is so much better than this.
Anyway I could be wrong and they pass it… but my gut says 213 yes, 218 no. Almost certainly it will die in the Senate.
If the Republicans thought town hall protests were bad before, they've got a whole other thing coming if they actually manage to narrowly pass this in the House.
They get to do a big hoorah about working closer to "killing" Obamacare and handing Trump a quick win, and screw themselves over in the long term. There are so many different ways this could come to bite them in the ass, it's beyond myopic they're pushing themselves to pass it. They're borrowing instant political capital now charged against political gains later.
This isn't even mentioning how badly they will get burnt in the state legislatures by granting states the leverage to control pre-existing coverage. On the off-chance this monstrosity actually becomes law, the current setup is a silver bullet to undo all of the gains Republicans have made in the state chambers come the midterms. All the Democrats have to do is campaign on maximizing state coverage on preexisting conditions and out goes the Republican majorities.
