It was a dramatic moment, a Hollywood moment, a moment about which movies will be made and books will be written.
A senior Republican Senator from a very red state walked bleary-eyed to the well of the Senate in the early hours of the morning. The Senator voted "No" on the motion. The "No" killed the GOP's Health Care Freedom Act, an eight page piece of legislation unveiled only hours before. The Act was a walking misnomer. For the 15 million who would have lost their medical insurance as a consequence, it provided neither health nor freedom.
The "No" saved Obamacare from the inevitable death it would have suffered at the hands of this misnomer. Everyone -- even the GOP -- wants insurance companies to cover those with pre-existing conditions while keeping premiums affordable. That can't be done if the pool of insured is either too small or too sick. Costs soar in either case; the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted premium hikes of 20% had the misnomer become law. Hence, Obamacare's individual mandate, the requirement that everyone have health insurance, and pay premiums, so that the sick can be treated at prices we can all afford.
The "No" restored some common sense to the health care debate. Once it happened, the Majority Leader, GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell, was forced to concede that his party must now move on to other matters. This probably means that health care returns to the Congressional committees within whose jurisdiction it rests; no more midnight votes on unknown bills where there have been no hearings, perhaps the end of legislating ignorance.
The Senate, like the country, is exhausted. It is tired of Trump and tweets and twilight sessions designed to fulfill promises Republicans made but never thought they'd have to honor. Repealing Obamacare was one of those promises. Everyone sitting in the Senate last night thought Trump would lose last November . . .
And that Hillary would save them from the consequences of their vote.
Alas, Hillary was at home in Chappaqua and The Donald was at home in the White House.
His Hairness, as he told us repeatedly throughout the week, had "pen in hand," ready to sign anything the Republican Congress sent him. The Health Care Freedom Act would do. He wanted a bill, any bill. He vigorously lobbied the Senator who would ultimately stop the GOP in its tracks and prevent Trump from claiming his obsessively sought "win". Though his campaign promise to insure that all have health insurance had become, as another failing President once famously said, "inoperative" . . .
The "No" saved us from that as well.
When it was over, Republicans cried but Democrats did not gloat. They knew how close they had come to a GOP "Yes" that spelled disaster for 15 million and a lot of premium pain for the rest of us.
Earlier in the week, a motion to repeal Obamacare and replace it with the Senate's amended version of the House's repeal and replace had failed by a fourteen vote margin, and on Wednesday a motion to just repeal Obamacare without any replacement had failed by ten votes. In both cases, more than a half dozen GOP Senators had voted against.
By Thursday night, however, the GOP had come up with a pared down version that became known as "skinny repeal." It eliminated the individual mandate, funding for Planned Parenthood, and some taxes (over a period of years). But it didn't touch Medicaid, and because of that, it seemed to thread the needle, allowing GOP Senators from states that had accepted the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare to satisfy their Governors while repealing the provisions of the Affordable Care Act Republicans hated most. Nevertheless, the CBO predicted that 15 million would lose insurance if skinny repeal became law.
At 2:00 a.m. today, those 15 million breathed a sigh of relief. Skinny repeal was defeated . . .
By one vote.
In a rare profile in courage at a time when there's lots of the former but almost none of the latter, the vote came from a senior Republican Senator from an implacably red state.
A state that Donald Trump easily carried last November.
I'm speaking, of course, of . . .
Alaska's Lisa Murkowski.