Will TrumpCare Fail in the Senate?
By 
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that it’s in the political interest of Republicans to just let the Obamacare exchanges collapse. “Let it be a disaster, because we can blame that on the Dems,” Trump told governors two weeks ago, summing up a thought he’s expressed repeatedly.
If Trump and some Republicans now think their best course of action is to do nothing and continue blaming problems with the health care system on Democrats, then perhaps the best cover they can offer their members is to move a GOP bill out of the House, watch it die in the Senate, and then spend the next two years blaming Senate Democrats in states that Trump won.
In that scenario, voters fail to recognize that Republicans have the power to pass this bill without a single Democratic vote, and the ire over Obamacare doesn’t dissipate even though voters have seen the GOP alternative.
If moderates knew that the House legislation would never go into effect, it might allow them to support the bill. It would become just another messaging vote.
House Republican aides are already starting to blame the Senate for intransigence.
Part of me thinks that it will fail in the Senate, and part of me thinks that Collins et al. can be persuaded that while taking health insurance from 24 million people to pay for a massive upper-class tax cut is unacceptable taking health insurance from 23.5 million people to pay for a slightly less massive upper-class tax cuts is a true Burkean compromise.
It is encouraging if Trump actually believes that Senate Democrats can be blamed for anything. It has no chance of working, but if Trump and perhaps some key Senate Republicans buy the myth, so much the better.