Yesterday, when the voters of Alabama were sealed in their voting cubicles, they voted for Roy Moore, much to the chagrin of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and anyone who wants a remotely functional Senate, knows how to read, or ever breathes through their noses. McConnell also announced that he was cancelling plans to vote on Graham-Cassidy, the last remaining GOP plan to "repeal-and-replace" Obamacare, and I continue to use quotation marks because the use of budget reconciliation precludes an actual repeal anyway.
So, let's talk about the politics of failure. Remember all that winnin' Trump was supposed to do?
Why does he, and why does the Senate GOP in particular, keep failing? With Roy Moore, you may be tempted to make some general argument about the risk of getting primaried, and I'll go into this "more" at some point, but remember that Strange was an appointee, and Moore is a celebrity politician in Alabama. This was weird, and primary challenges are rarely successful. If you want to study primary challenges, you have to pay attention to the ones that don't work too. But, let's move on to why McConnell can't pass anything.
Why is it that they can't even pass anything on healthcare? I mean, isn't this something that was supposed to be their big thing after seven years? There is the fact that they never bothered to put together any specific legislative plans over the past seven years, never bothered with a real legislative process this year... We can put together any number of explanations specific to healthcare, but there is something bigger going on. How can we tell?
Because the Senate hasn't done jack fucking shit on anything except to confirm Plagiarist-Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. (No, I'm never letting that go because fuck plagiarists!)
Political science time! Conditional party government. This is the model of parties in Congress associated with John Aldrich and David Rohde. I'm sure they would love to be associated with a blog post including the line, "fuck plagiarists," and an essentially naked Bart Simpson. Anywho, the model essentially says that a legislative party delegates power to the party leader when a set of conditions are met, most importantly that the party is internally ideologically homogenous. When that holds, the party leadership will be given broad authority, and the result will be a unified party that achieves its ends.
McConnell just had to pull a vote that he was going to lose because he couldn't keep it together. His party isn't unified on policy responses to Obamacare. There are 52 GOP Senators, ranging from Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski on the relative left (true moderates) to Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Ted Cruz on the right, soon to be joined by Roy Moore, who makes those three look like the previous two. Perhaps more importantly, the caucus is divided by different beliefs about the acceptability of compromise. Roy Moore will exacerbate that division too.
Without a unified caucus, the party leader can't do jack fucking shit because the caucus won't let him. Ryan has been able to get more through, partially because the numbers are more on his side, but partially because the structural rules in the House give the Speaker more tools in order to manage the tools he has to manage, if you catch my drift. The Senate Majority Leader? Basically, he can schedule stuff. He has a few more tricks beyond that which I would describe if my coffee weren't running low, but compared to the Speaker's ability to influence the composition of the committees, including the Rules Committee, McConnell is just head deal-maker. Sure, he's better at that than Trump, but that's not saying much. Trump is an idiot charlatan. The problem is that McConnell just doesn't have the numbers on his side. His caucus isn't unified, and there isn't much you can do when you are trying to bridge the divide between that particular 52-person caucus.
But now, I'm going to go dark, even by my standards. The GOP is not done trying with Obamacare, and don't believe anyone who says they are. Collins and Murkowski are out of this. McConnell can't get their votes for anything that can get the votes of the House Freedom Caucus. Remember them? And Roy Fuckin' Mouth-Breathin' Moore is on his way, which means this is all about... John McCain.
John McCain has terminal cancer. Remember Ted Kennedy? Remember how his death changed the politics of Obamacare passage? See where I'm going with this? If McCain dies, you know who replaces him? Doug Ducey, Governor of Arizona. He appoints a Republican, and not a McCain-Republican because McCain is a fuckin' weirdo. He appoints a conventional Republican who goes along with McConnell. Hell, Luther Strange was going along with whatever McConnell put in front of him. Take Collins and Murkowski off the table, replace McCain with Joe-Schmo generic Republican, move the bill right in response to the dramatic posturing of Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, egged on by that fuckwit, Roy Moore, and you've got a bill that passes.
There's a whole lotta failin' goin' on. It won't necessarily stay that way. Why not? It's all about caucus unity, and that can change.