PredictIt currently has the betting at essentially a tie.
What will happen in Alabama? Right now, it is very hard to say. Once that latest story came out, with a particularly violent attack by Moore, it actually became conceivable that Alabama would vote for a Democrat. And don't get your self-righteous hackles up about that. As I wrote last weekend, it makes moral sense for a true social conservative to vote for Moore, and if you're being honest, you could find a circumstance in which you'd vote for a child molester too, so shut the fuck up about it, you hypocrite, you.
Anyway, what will happen? I don't know. And neither do Senate Republicans. And that helps them with their tax bill. Here's how. Their legislative strategy essentially relies on the legislative equivalent of Looney Toons physics.
Whenever Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff, he keeps running until he looks down. Once he notices that there isn't any ground beneath his feet, he falls.
Extrapolate.
If you are facing a chasm, run really fast, and don't look down. You might make it to the other side. As long as you run really fast, and don't look down. (And live in a cartoon. Please don't try this.)
Slow down, and you fall. Look down, notice that there isn't any ground, and you fall.
The Republican legislative approach since January has been to write the legislation in secret, unveil it at the last moment, call for a vote as fast as possible, and hope that nobody either looks at the text or polls about the legislation. Why? The text is always poorly thought-out, and constructed only to cobble together a coalition based on the objections individual legislators have offered, with no study about the consequences of the policies themselves. The policies themselves are also quite unpopular. Cutting healthcare benefits is unpopular. Raising individual taxes by cutting tax deductions in order to cut corporate taxes is unpopular. What effects would these policies have?
STOP ASKING! JUST VOTE NOW!
The entire process, both for "repeal-and-replace" and for taxes, has been a caricature of the manner in which Republicans described the passage of Obamacare. In fact, Obamacare went through months and months and months of hearings, revisions, amendments, etc., and the GOP isn't doing that for anything, but they spent years telling themselves, along with everyone else, that the Democrats wrote the bill in secret and then passed it at lightning speed, so they figured they'd do that.
And they think that it is the only way that they can pass anything. The Wile E. Coyote method. Run really fast and don't look down.
On healthcare, they went splat. A bunch of times. Like Wile E. Coyote, they're trying again. (No, ACME did not design the budget reconciliation process, but maybe I'll start drawing analogies between Elizabeth MacDonough and the Roadrunner!).
The thing is... their basic premise might be right. Legislatin' ain't runnin'. If you don't give people time to think, they really will do stupid shit, and if that is our analog to "not falling," then Majority Leader W.E. Coyote might be onto something here.
Speed is of the essence. The worst thing that the GOP can do is slow down. If they slow down, one of two things can happen to the Senate on the tax bill. They will either a) decide that the whole thing is dangerous because raising middle class taxes (which the bill does for some middle class voters) in order to cut corporate taxes will backfire, or b) descend into irreconcilable bickering and never pass anything.
The solution? Speed. Don't stop, don't think, don't talk, just VOTE NOW NOW NOW!
This has been the GOP's overall strategy all along, and you can see why.
The slimmer the margin in the Senate, the more important speed becomes. Right now, McConnell can lose two votes. Ignore Ron Johnson. He's just being dramatic. I've ranted about the "Drama Club" before, and I'll do it again. He won't be the guy to kill a tax cut. He'll be happy to vote against a bill that will die anyway, and he'd love to be the one Republican posturing against a tax cut that passes, saying it wasn't conservative enough, but he won't kill the bill.
Regardless, McConnell can lose two votes. He has a puzzle to solve. He'll have Republican Senators jockeying to be the no votes. Collins and Murkowski might want to vote no sincerely. Then there are the Drama Clubbers (Paul, Cruz, Johnson, Lee), who will want to posture. Then, there's McCain and his flights of fancy. Remember, he was a lousy pilot, which was how he wound up a POW... Corker will have to be reminded that he's still a Republican, and they only care about deficits when the president has a "D" after his name.
So, the party plays a game of musical chairs. They go around in circles, and when the music stops, everyone rushes for those two chairs. Two Republican Senators can sit down. The rest are losers. They have to vote yes. Unless they decide they don't want to play anymore, and they blow up the game, knock over the chairs and start vandalizing the room like a bunch of fucking toddlers.
But, the longer those Senators argue about who is going to get to sit down, the more difficult it gets. The more they will argue about arranging the chairs, why aren't the chairs padded, what the music selection should be, when the music should be stopped, when is recess, and blah, blah, fucking blah. Eventually, one of them will shit their pants, a fight will break out, and the game becomes moot.
McConnell needs an excuse to stop the music and call for a vote before everything goes all to hell.
Roy Moore may give him that. The weaker he looks, the more precarious the GOP's Senate margin gets. Right now, it is 52-48. If that goes down to 51-49, they can only lose one vote. The game gets that much harder, and only one Republican will get to vote no! McConnell can't let that happen. He needs to call for a vote before the Senate margin gets to 51-49.
We don't have an official timeline for a Senate vote, and it is movable. Right now, the plan is sometime after Thanksgiving. McConnell won't call for a vote unless he has the votes. Here's the thing, though. The more scared the caucus gets, the more important speed gets.
That helps McConnell! If the Senate GOP gets scared that they need to pass something before Luther Strange is replaced by Doug Jones, then they'll vote sooner. They'll rush the vote, which is exactly what McConnell wants!
Speed is the basis of the Republican strategy. Moore's weakness makes speed that much more important. Roy Moore helps the GOP on taxes.
What happens? If the Senate Republicans are really nervous, they will wait until after the election, and see how it goes. If Jones wins, they'll cobble together something and vote immediately. And this should bring to mind Obamacare! Remember when Ted Kennedy died? The Senate passed a version before his death, then Scott Brown won a special election to replace him, so the House had to pass the Senate's unamended bill... If the Senate rushes a vote because Jones is about to be seated, then passes a bill, 51-50 with Pence breaking a tie, the House might have to suck it up and pass whatever the Senate passed to avoid a conference committee, even though the Freedom Caucus will want to go through their usual histrionics. That'll be fun!
What's next? We'll see.
