The Bubble: Health care fail has conservatives calling for McConnell's head
William CummingsEach week, USA TODAY's OnPolitics blog takes a look at how media from the left and the right reacted to a political news story, giving liberals and conservatives a peek into the other's media bubble.
This week, liberals cheerfully chortled and conservatives dourly despaired after the Republican-controlled Senate failed to pass a Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.
One thing both sides agreed on? The failure to kill the health care law that conservatives love to hate is a political disaster for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
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From the right: It's time to ditch McConnell
Conservative blogger and radio host Erick Erickson put the failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act squarely on McConnell's shoulders. While claiming to want to get rid of Obamacare "root and branch," the Senate majority leader "has been working with liberal senators," Erickson said.
"The entirety of the GOP agenda is stuck in the Senate where Mitch McConnell seems intent to let it all die on the vine while blaming conservatives," Erickson wrote. "It is time for the Senate GOP to replace Mitch McConnell so that President Trump can actually get some of his legislative policies advanced. It is not conservatives who are the obstacle, but the Senate leader himself."
From the left: 'McConnell is the biggest loser'
The Nation's Joan Walsh also said the fault for the Republican bill's failure lies with McConnell.
Widely considered a brilliant tactician, in fact McConnell has never had to craft conservative legislation that would survive in the real world, as long as President Obama stood ready with his veto pen. Now, with control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, Republicans have had to confront the anti-government derangement that animates the party’s right wing
"McConnell tried to sell the bill as all things to all GOP senators, and he got caught," Walsh wrote.
From the right: A reason for conservatives to never vote Republican again
Townhall's Matt Vespa said Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel didn't know the half of it when she said last week that Republican voters would be "very upset" if Congress fails to repeal and replace Obamacare.
You’re giving conservative voters a reason to never vote Republican ever again if this totally blows up. Right now, the ship is taking on heavy water and the GOP seems incapable of getting this done without also getting bloodied, bruised, and beaten from their side of the aisle. It’s becoming increasingly more embarrassing by the day, especially when this all came about because the GOP was convinced that Trump was going to lose that they didn’t even bother with coming up with a plan.
From the left: 'Amateur hour at the White House'
On Rachel Maddow's blog, producer Steve Benen focused on Trump's failures, not McConnell's.
As the health care fight unfolded, Trump was at different times passive and impatient, ignorant and demanding," Benen wrote. "In the president’s mind, to lead on the issue meant barking vague orders to a separate branch of government, and then sitting back, waiting for a bill he wouldn’t read or understand to arrive in the Oval Office ... Amateur hour at the White House, in his case, is a chronic condition. Trump may wonder privately “why legislators don’t seem to listen to him,” but the only mystery is why the answer isn’t already clear to him.
From the right: Repeal failure makes GOP the 'party of bad faith'
National Review editor Rich Lowry blamed moderate Republican senators more than McConnell's handling of the bill.
"It’s not just that Republicans have said for years that they would repeal Obamacare; they actually voted to do it," Lowry wrote, pointing out that only two GOP senators voted against repealing the ACA in 2015: Susan Collins and Mark Kirk (who is no longer in the Senate).
Lowry argued the current Senate bill is actually less mean (to borrow a phrase) than the repeal the "Medicaid moderates" voted for two years ago. He said the explanation is that those Republicans got cold feet when they were faced with voting for a bill that would actually become law.
"Winston Churchill said that nothing is so exhilarating as getting shot at without consequence," Lowry said. "For Republicans, nothing was as exhilarating as repealing Obamacare without consequence."
From the left: 'The resistance movement killed the Republican health care bill'
The pressure from constituents opposed to the Senate health care bill is what killed the repeal effort, Kira Lerner wrote for ThinkProgress. She cites the fact that Kansas Republican Jerry Moran said he wouldn't support the bill 11 days after holding a town hall where he heard the concerns of hundreds of his constituents.
'Moran has not said whether the town hall played a part in changing his mind, and any theories about his thinking would be speculation," Lerner wrote. "But there’s no question that Moran felt political pressure. Ultimately, the bill’s massive unpopularity and the work by constituents in his state played a part in killing the legislation that cannot be discounted."
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