Mitch McConnell's bucket of suck

It's worse than most people think. If the Freedom Caucus hadn't stood in the way of triggering the three-bucket health care solution rightly tagged as "RINOcare," and it had passed, we'd be on Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) "long game" train that would never reach its destination.

Many people have talked about the "third bucket" of the Republican's health care plan as one that was particularly enticing. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) explained on "Face the Nation" that the third bucket was the "sucker's bucket." He said that everything in the third bucket was put there because there would be a need to have eight Democrats to vote for it, according to the way the Senate is run. Cruz said that phase three was never going to happen because, "You can't get eight Senate Democrats to agree on saying good morning."

Jim Geraghty at National Review also questioned phase three, noting that it would be quite a difficult road to get eight Democratic Senate seats to flip in 2018. He wrote, "Nuking the filibuster appears to be off the table, at least for now. So what's the roadmap to get to 60 votes? And if there is no viable path to get 60 votes ... how do the ideas in 'Phase Three' ever get enacted?"...

...The way the AHCA was set up, looking back, has McConnell's fingerprints all over it for two reasons. One, the sucker's bucket, as Cruz aptly termed it, promised all the goodies conservatives wanted yet took eight Democrats to enact. "Impossible!" said nearly everyone. But if you look at it from McConnell's point of view, it makes sense. He will not change Senate procedure in his "precious institution" where he has sat for 32 years....

- See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2017/03/mitch-mcconnells-bucket-of-suck#sthash.VFQ3F892.dpuf