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During the Obama years, congressional Republicans could rail away at the Affordable Care Act and vote endlessly to repeal it, secure in the knowledge that they would never have to deal with the consequences of repeal actually happening. At the same time, they could claim they wanted to keep the popular parts (protections for people with preexisting conditions) without explaining how that might be accomplished while jettisoning the unpopular parts (the individual mandate).

But now, repeal has suddenly become a reality. President-elect Donald Trumps choice of GOP Rep. Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services underscores that he is dead serious about going forward with repeal-and-maybe-replace. Which means congressional Republicans (who will have to vote on repeal and then later maybe on replace) now have to grapple with the consequences of repeal actually happening and with the challenges of keeping the stuff people like while blithely tossing out the stuff they dont.

Talking Points Memo has a good piece that captures the contortions this is forcing Republicans to put themselves through right now. There are a number of questions they are trying to resolve: How can we keep protections for people with preexisting conditions while scrapping the mandate that keeps the insurance pool from getting too old and sick? How much can be repealed through reconciliation and a simple-majority Senate vote? All of those are difficult problems.

But I wanted to focus for the moment on one particular question: What will Republican legislators from states that have expanded Medicaid do? Note this quote that TPM got from Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from Trump-friendly West Virginia:

Im from a state that has an expanded Medicaid population that I am very concerned about.I dont want to throw them off into the cold, and I dont think thats a strategy that I want to see. Its too many people. Thats over 200,000 people in my state. So we need a transition. I think well repeal and then well work during the transition period for the replacement vehicle.

Capito knows that repeal would mean 200,000 of her constituents lose health coverage. And it turns out there are many other GOP Senators in a similar situation.

Donald Trump has campaigned to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, once he gets into office. Now that he's won the presidency with a majority Republican House and Senate, that feat might not prove to be too easy. Wonkblog's Max Ehrenfreund explains. (Daron Taylor/The Washington Post)

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 32 states have adopted the Medicaid expansion so far. By my count, next year there will be over 20 Republican senators in those states. (The ones that are expanding Medicaid and have one or two GOP Senators are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.)

The interesting nuance here is that before, GOP governors in those states could expand Medicaid even as GOP Senators in them continued to call for Obamacares repeal (with nothing happening). But now they will have to cast a repeal vote that actually means taking health care away from untold numbers of their own constituents.

And repeal of the Medicaid expansion is now a very real possibility. Congressman Price Trumps pick to head HHS has offered a repeal plan that rolls it back entirely. Price has offered a replace plan, but some experts think it would likely leave most of the 20 million people who would currently lose insurance after repeal without coverage.

Regardless, even if Republicans do fully intend to try to provide a replace plan that does cover most of those currently on the Medicaid expansion, it isnt going to be easy, and its going to require spending money. Thats why Republican Senators in Medicaid expansion states such as Capito above are claiming they are going to transition those people to a new plan after repealing Obamacare, while cautioning that it will take awhile. Others are predicting it could take years.

Republicans are going to have a tough time coalescing around a replacement plan, and it is going to take time, Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, tells me. This is enormously complicated stuff with difficult tradeoffs. Insurance coverage for millions of people is at stake.

There was a time when I would have confidently predicted that Republicans who do vote to toss huge numbers of their constituents off of health coverage, without replacing it, would pay a political price for it. Im no longer sure thats true. Its very possible that Republicans may end up repealing Obamacare while vowing a replacement in time that somehow never ends up materializing, because the details prove too difficult, or consensus proves elusive, or the base doesnt allow it. Alternatively, a replacement that leaves many current Obamacare beneficiaries without coverage is also possible.

Still, youd think some Republican Senators might be as troubled by such an outcome as Capito at least appears to be, and youd think some will genuinely wrestle with the policy complications of replacing Obamacare, and in the process will find out that its a lot harder than expected. In this sense, at least, consequence-free railing about repeal might have been a lot more fun than actual real-world repeal might turn out to be.

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The Washington Post: Republicans Suddenly Discover That ...

2016

Down-ticket Republicans lost,' one GOP pollster said. 'They needed some help and got absolutely none.'

By Alex Isenstadt and Katie Glueck

10/20/16 05:09 AM EDT

Donald Trumps rocky performance on the final debate stage in Las Vegas on Wednesday night did little to allay his partys concerns that the GOP is headed for an electoral catastrophe up and down the ticket.

In interviews with over a dozen senior Republican strategists, not one said Trump did anything to change the trajectory of a contest that is growing further out of reach. And many said they were deeply distressed by Trumps refusal to accept the results of the Nov. 8 election, an eyebrow-raising moment already dominating headlines.

Story Continued Below

With Trumps prospects for securing 270 electoral votes growing dimmer by the day, many Republicans have turned their focus to the gritty, unpleasant task of protecting the partys congressional majorities. Trump, they said, did little to buttress the GOP ticket and may have worsened its position by repeating his claim that the election is rigged, something congressional Republicans are sure to be pressed on in the days to come.

Immediately after Trumps remark, several party higher-ups, including South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, took to Twitter to distance themselves from it.

The biggest loser tonight was not Trump; the presidential race is over, said Robert Blizzard, a GOP pollster who is working on a number of congressional races. Instead, down-ticket Republicans lost tonight they needed some help and got absolutely none.

Republicans have been conducting extensive polling to gauge what impact Trumps tanking fortunes are having on House and Senate candidates. While many candidates have taken a hit since the release of the bombshell Access Hollywood tape, party operatives maintain that the bottom hasnt completely fallen out and that a down-ballot landslide isnt necessarily in the cards.

Yet many Republicans were eager to see Trump deliver a steady performance, something that would stabilize his poll numbers at a time when surveys show him losing ground in traditionally conservative states like Arizona, Georgia and Utah.

Steve Schmidt, who guided John McCains 2008 presidential campaign, said Trumps refusal to commit to accepting election results would overshadow any strong moments he had.

Its the one and only headline that matters coming out of the debate, said Schmidt. Its absolutely unprecedented for any presidential candidate in the history of the country.

Not everyone agreed the performance was a complete wreck. To some, it represented a marked improvement on Trumps first two showdowns with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton one that was badly marred by one particularly damaging moment.

He made a really huge mistake tonight when he would not commit to 100 percent accepting the results of the election whether he wins or loses, said Austin Barbour, a Mississippi-based Republican strategist. For him, that is a big takeaway from tonight. Its a shame for him; he could have walked away, I think, as the winner from tonight, but that line will be one that is played in a big in a bigly way with the press tomorrow.

To some, the performance represented whats gone awry with the Trump campaign. After exhibiting moments of discipline early on, he squandered it later with his remarks on the election, with his refusal to criticize Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and with his comment that Hillary Clinton is a nasty woman.

That Trump would go so far as to criticize former President Ronald Reagan an almost universally beloved figure in conservative circles on trade policy, left some Republicans aghast. Its hard to understand, said Al Cardenas, a former Florida Republican Party chairman.

This is microcosm of the general election campaign, said Mike DuHaime, a former Republican National Committee political director who helped guide New Jersey Gov. Chris Christies presidential bid. Trump does well at times but can't sustain it for the entire time and makes unnecessary mistakes.

In the short term, it will be up to Trump to limit whatever long-term damage the debate may cause something he failed to do after the first debate at Hofstra University, when he was dragged into a series of back-and-forths over his treatment of a former beauty-pageant contestant.

If Trump hopes to change things around, he can't repeat that act, said Eric Fehrnstrom, a top strategist on Mitt Romneys 2012 bid. He needs to show the kind of discipline that has mostly eluded him so far.

Yet the debate could have longer-term repercussions, potentially increasing the urgency with which down-ballot Republicans begin presenting themselves as a check and balance to a Clinton presidency. In doing so, they would all but concede that Trump is destined to fall short.

Its an option that GOP strategists have been discussing but have yet to put into motion in a widespread fashion.

Trump was already behind, said Bill Kristol, a Trump critic and the editor-in-chief of the conservative publication The Weekly Standard. He didn't help himself tonight; indeed, he hurt himself. He's very likely to lose, and to lose badly. He'll drag the Senate and House down with him unless Senate and House candidates can make the case they're needed to check and balance Hillary.

Read more:
Republicans despondent that Trump threw away final debate ...

The election is just five days away, and something truly frightening is happening, something with far-reaching implications for the immediate future of American politics. Republicans, led by Donald Trump but by no means limited to him, are engaging in kind of termite-level assault on American democracy, one that looks on the surface as though its just aimed at Hillary Clinton, but in fact is undermining our entire system.

I know, my conservative friends will say that this kind of talk is just fear-mongering and exaggeration. But there is something deeply troubling happening right now, and it goes beyond the ordinary trading of blows in a campaign season. Consider these recent developments:

[The only way Trump can win]

It is important to understand that is not normal. This is not just bare-knuckle politics. Something extraordinary is happening.

The Post's Rosalind Helderman breaks down the latest developments of the controversies involving the FBI less than a week from Election Day. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

Lets take the FBI case as just one example. You have a situation where a group of FBI agents is in direct conflict with prosecutors who believe the agents have a weak case in their attempt to find evidence of corruption that can be used against Clinton. The agents, in an atrocious violation of FBI policy against injecting the Bureau into an election, begin leaking dark innuendo to reporters. That convinces the FBI director that he has no choice but to go public with the fact that the Bureau is looking at some emails that might or might not have something to do with Clinton, though no one has actually read them. That news lands like a bombshell, despite its complete lack of substance.

And then it turns out that these agents are basing their investigation on a book called Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer. Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute, an organization co-founded and chaired by Steve Bannon. Who is the CEO of the Trump campaign.

While the imagine if the other side was doing this argument can sometimes sound trite, in this case its more than apt. Imagine if a group of FBI agents were leaking damaging information on Donald Trump in violation of longstanding departmental policy, and it turned out that they were basing their innuendo on a book published by the Center for American Progress, which Clinton campaign chair John Podesta founded and used to run. Republicans would be crying bloody murder, and Im pretty sure the entire news media would be backing them up every step of the way.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump believes there's a global conspiracy to stop him from becoming president but it's not the first time he's pushed unfounded theories. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

[Former CIA chief: Trump is Russias useful fool]

Its not that this kind of thing is completely unprecedented. When Bill Clinton was impeached, people talked about the criminalization of politics the idea that Republicans were trying to use the levers of the justice system as a means to prevail in what should be just ordinary political competition. George W. Bushs administration fired a group of U.S. Attorneys because they were unwilling to pursue bogus voter fraud cases against Democrats or were too willing to investigate genuine corruption among Republican officials. There are cases like the absurd prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, who has been in jail for years because he reappointed to a state health care board a man who had donated money to a lottery initiative Siegelman favored. And there was this guy named J. Edgar Hoover.

But as he has in so many ways, Donald Trump takes every ugly impulse Republicans have and turns it up to 11, and just about the entire party follows him down. So now they are making it very clear that from literally the day Hillary Clinton is inaugurated, they will wage total war on her. There will be no rule or norm or standard of decency they wont flout if it gets them a step closer to destroying her, no matter what the collateral damage.

Its important to understand that strong institutions are what separate strong democracies from weak ones. In a strong democracy, one party cant come into power and just lock up its opponents. It cant turn the countrys law enforcement agencies into a partisan tool to destroy the other party. It cant say that the courts will function only at its pleasure. We have the worlds most stable system not just because there arent tanks in the streets on election day, but because we have institutions that are strong enough to restrain the venality of individual men and women. And now, Republicans are not even pretending that those institutions should be impartial and transcend partisanship. Theyre saying, if we can use them to destroy our opponents, we will. Something is seriously breaking down.

[Heres how you destroy a democratic republic]

And please, spare me any explanations for this phenomenon that rely on how divided Americans are. Are we divided? Sure. But theres only one party that is so vigorously undermining core democratic institutions in this way. You may not like what Democrats stand for, but they arent engaging in widespread official vote suppression, chanting that should their candidate win her opponent should be tossed in jail, promising to prevent any Republican president from filling vacancies on the Supreme Court, suggesting that theyll try to impeach their opponent as soon as he takes office, cheering when a hostile foreign power hacks into American electronic systems, and trying to use the FBI to win the election.

Only one party is doing all of that. And we should all be very worried about what Republicans will do after November 8, whether they win or lose.

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Republicans are now vowing Total War. And the consequences ...

Senate Republicans don't necessarily need Donald Trump to win for them to hold onto their majority. (In fact, some of them are campaigning on a Trump loss.) They just need him to avoid a blowout loss.

And on Monday, as the presidential race tightens, we have even more evidence that even if Trump loses to Hillary Clinton by roughly 3 to 5 points, Senate Republicans could hang on. The Fix's Philip Bump pulled the latest polling averages from RealClearPolitics and found that of the 13 most competitive Senate races this cycle, Republicans are outperforming Trump in nine. Sometimes by a lot.

One of the most impressive performances by a Senate Republican comes in one of the Senate's biggest battles. Even though Clinton is up by more than 5 points over Trump in New Hampshire, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) is leading her Democratic challenger by 2.7 points. That means Ayotte is outperforming her party's nominee by almost 8 points and this is after twisting herself into a virtually unrecognizable pretzel to kind of sort of support Trump.

It isn't all that unusual for an incumbent senator to be polling ahead of their party's presidential nominee by a few points. But to be ahead of the nominee by 8 or 13 points is almost unheard of in modern-day politics. Modern-day votershave been abandoningthe practice of split-ticket voting, where they might mark the ballot for Democrat for president then vote for the Republican for Senate.

In 2012, almost no Republican Senate candidate outperformed Mitt Romney. (The outlier was Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who outperformed Romney by almost 8 points.) In that election, only 4 percent of voters voted for both Barack Obama and a Republican congressional candidate.

But Senate Republicans are consistently defying the odds this election cycle. In mid-September, we found that on average, Senate Republicans were polling 4 percentage points better than Trump. A month and a half later, they're outperforming Trump by an average 3.3 points.

It's also helpful for Senate Republicans that the presidential race is tightening: Clinton is ahead by just 2.5 points, according to a RealClearPolitics average.

Speaking of Ayotte and pretzel-twisting, the reason Senate Republicans are hanging on likely comes down to this: They're doing what they need to do to distance themselves from Trump. Almost all of the Republicans on this list have distanced themselves from Trump in one way or another; several ditched Trump right after The Tape, and a handful are campaigning as if Clinton is already president, promising to be a check and balance on her.

The four outliers, where Trump is outperforming his party's Senate candidate (Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin and Colorado) can mostly be explained by struggling Senate Republican candidates. Most political observers already have Wisconsin and Colorado in Democrats' column; Indiana is a toss-up thanks to a strong Democratic challenger in former senator Evan Bayh.

Missouri is likely the most troubling for Senate Republicans. Sen. Roy Blunt (R) was not expecting a strong race, and yet Trump is outperforming him by more than 6 points.

To be clear, Democrats are still the favored party to take back the Senate. They effectively need to win just four seats; they have a real chance in five to seven. And just because a candidate like Kirk is outperforming Trump doesn't mean he'll win Kirk isstill down by an average 7 points, after all.

Democrats may still be poised to retake the Senate majority. But Republicans aren't making it easy.

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Senate Republicans keep defying gravity and Donald Trump ...

The FBI announcement Friday that the agency would restart its investigation into Hillary Clintons email has the potential to change the outcome of her presidential race with Republican rival Donald Trump.

But even Republicans eager to retake the White House question the impact of the so-called October surprise, with Election Day just 10 days away.

Most voters have decided they are ignoring her criminal-type activity and are voting for her, California Rep. Darrell Issa said Saturday on Fox News Fox and Friends.

Issa made the comments a day after FBI Director James Comey announced the investigation into Clintons emails, which she sent and received on a private server system while secretary of state, would be reopened as a result of an investigation into former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner sexting on a laptop he shared with wife and Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Issa said the other segment of voters, who appears equally entrenched, are those who think Trump is too gruff and unconventional for a presidential candidate and they dont want Clinton profiting from running the country like she and other family members apparently did through their charitable Clinton Foundation.

Issa said such voters likely think the Clintons are in it for the money and saying, Lets not have them in the White House getting billions while selling out America.

He pointed out that 50 percent of voters in strongly-Democratic California have already voted.

Trump -- consistently trailing Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, in most major polls by about 5 percentage points -- on Friday immediately tried to seize on the news.

The investigation is the biggest political scandal since Watergate. And its everybody's hope that justice at last can be delivered, Trump said in battleground Iowa, where he remains in a tight race with Clinton.

Clinton, while also in Iowa on Friday, hastily called a press conference to tell the FBI to release the "full and complete facts" about its review.

"Voting is underway, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately," she said.

Republican strategist Rob Carter on Friday suggested the revelations will have little impact on incumbent Republicans senators trying to keep their seats and control of the Senate.

While this seems very significant and is being met with great eagerness on the right and some trepidation on the left, I am hard-pressed to get my hopes up that this will help down-ballot Republicans being hurt by Trump in Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and other states, he said.

Republican strategist and Fox News contributor Karl Rove suggested Saturday that the new email review could in fact impact undecided voters and those who had planned not to vote.

It is going to cause some of them to say, This is why I dont like Hillary Clinton, and vote for Trump, he said on Fox News.

Continued here:
Republicans have only guarded optimism about FBI probe ...