Imagine the Backlash if Cruz, Lee, and Paul Had Torpedoed the 2015 Bill Last Month

Let’s do a little thought experiment.

Earlier this summer, President Trump voiced his support for the 2015 bill to repeal Obamacare. Remember, that’s the bill that all current Republican senators who were there voted for on December 3, 2015 (with the notable exception of reliable liberal and fraud Republican Susan Collins) under Obama’s guaranteed veto. This came up for a vote on the Senate last month.

Imagine that, because they believe a full repeal was possible under Republican control of the House, Senate, and White House, Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Rand Paul vote against the 2015 repeal.

Anyone who is honest with themselves knows that the Republican establishment would lose their collective minds. They would lash out at Cruz, Lee and Paul for denying them a big legislative win, their first of this president’s term. The establishment would call them the devil – which, as it turns out, they’ve done in real life.

And you know there would be retribution. Their roles as chairmen would be taken away quicker than you can say FreedomFraud. Oh wait, conservatives in the House have been kicked off committees before by the same member of leadership that called a fellow Republican Lucifer.

Thought experiment over, and back to reality: Sens. Murkowski, McCain, and Alexander actually did change their votes. They flip-flopped from supporting the 2015 ObamaCare repeal to supporting ObamaCare by voting against the 2015 repeal.

But they didn’t do so out of any allegiance to conservative principles or to the voters that put them in office. These senators voted against the 2015 repeal not because they wanted to repeal more of ObamaCare. Their votes reveal their actual support for even the most heavy-handed, premium-raising parts of ObamaCare – support that directly contradicts their words when the original vote occurred in 2015.

After Sen. Murkowski voted for it in 2015 and it passed, she said that Obamacare was not affordable for anyone in Alaska and that is why she supported the bill that repeals it and wipes out its harmful impacts. After Sen. McCain voted for it and it passed, he said it was clear that full repeal was necessary in any serious attempt to improve our healthcare system. After Sen. Alexander voted for the 2015 bill and it passed, he said the wisest course of action started with repealing ObamaCare.

This kind of duplicity is reprehensible in anyone – but particularly from those who were elected by the people based on their previous policy positions and promises. For this vote, and for countless other deceptive official and campaign statements that inveighed against Obamacare, these senators should lose their positions as chairs.

Lisa Murkowski should lose her position as chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

John McCain should lose his position as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Lamar Alexander should lose his position as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

We deserved better than this. We deserved much greater public pressure from leadership to vote for ObamaCare repeal. We deserved for Mitch McConnell to be on television, on radio and with reporters in the halls of the Senate emphasizing these senators’ previous votes and stressing the hypocrisy of switching their votes in the moment of truth. We deserved more than shrugs after these senators perpetrated this fraud on the American people. And we still deserve to see ObamaCare repealed.

Above all, we deserve better than officials like Murkowski, McCain, and Alexander. They should be stripped of their leadership roles for being FreedomFrauds.

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