Senator Struggling To Weigh Interests Of Entire Constituency Against Nothing
WASHINGTON—As legislators gathered Tuesday for a critical vote that would go a long way toward finally repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) was reportedly struggling to weigh the interests of her entire constituency against absolutely nothing. “Honestly, it’s a tough call—on one hand, you have opposition to the repeal from a majority of Republicans, virtually all Democrats, and the entire healthcare industry, while on the other, you have not one sound argument or credible opinion,” said Capito, admitting she was, even now, having difficulty balancing her desire to keep as many West Virginians insured as possible with there being no reason whatsoever to do otherwise. “This is an agonizing decision. Sure, there are sound justifications for voting no on ‘repeal and replace,’ but then there’s emptiness, literal emptiness, when you look for reasons to vote yes. All I know is, I have to get this right somehow.” At press time, Senator Capito had resigned herself to the fact that both sides had valid points and she would just have to go with her gut when the time came.
UPDATE: When the time came, Shelley Moore Capito not only voted to bring the repeal bill to the floor of the Senate, she also voted for the bill, even though 17 of her Republican colleagues voted against it. So much for her former loudly voiced opposition.
As Electoral-Vote points out, the motion to bring a bill to the floor for a vote required both the surprise return of John McCain to the Senate, but also a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence. That means that every single Republican Senator (except for Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who voted no) was the “deciding vote” to move forward with killing Obamacare. Given how popular Obamacare currently is with just about everyone other than Trump’s base, including a bunch of Republican governors, it is no surprise that the Democrats have already started running ads against individual senators who voted yes and who are up for re-election next year.
5 Comments
This is reminding me that Lisa Murkowski already survived one “death by primary” at the hands of the R Party.
Remember? She got her current term in the Senate via write-in votes in the general — and you had to spell her name perfectly in order for your vote to count.
I don’t know why she still caucuses with the party that did its best to kill her career. Republicans are strange…
I agree Westomoon. Strange they are. I guess they think that their base voters will be enough to carry them in the next election or that they will forgot this vote ever happened. Unfortunately, they probably will forget. I, on the other hand, seldom ever forget a bad act that affects me or my family. I had a minor car accident, that was not my fault when I was 17 or 18 and the insurance company that gave me a hard time has never seen a dime of my money since. That was over 55 years ago. I have what is called in my family, Grandma’s Shit List or less formally GSL.
The base voters in Kentucky like ACA. Call it Obamacare, they don’t like it. So not all the base supports the repeal. I think that Kentucky has the lowest I.Q. of any state and shown by the packages I get from Amazon packed in Hebron Kentucky. All inbred. Anyone here from Kentucky who wants to dispute the Kentucky intelligence?
When I lived in Ohio, a common joke was about the person who moved from Kentucky to West Virginia, and raised the average IQ of both states.
What makes publications like The Onion or The Borowitz Report such effective satire is how they can cut to the crux of the biscuit with only a few biting, well-turned phrases, in this case, on the historically unparalleled bizarre circus and cesspool this WH has become.
So it’s in this spirit that I share this piece from the Daily Kos published yesterday, from an author under the nom de guerre ShowerCap, regarding recent developments from both sides of Pa. Ave. I nearly fell off my bar stool several times (figuratively, of course) with laughter, even tears, and still haven’t been able to get the image of Ted Cruz in pasties and G-string out of my head, among other choice images. Anyway, it’s a least a brief reprieve from an otherwise dismal news week yet again. Because, you know, if you can’t laugh…you’d have to hurl!
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/24/1683662/-Did-all-this-really-happen-or-am-I-finally-just-hallucinating