Rand Paul got a phone call from Trump over the weekend, which he describes below, but says thus far he hasn’t heard from the Senate leadership. In fact he suggests that Trump needs to tell the leadership to begin negotiating with people like him in order to get this bill passed:
Paul says he told the president yesterday what would get him on board to vote for the bill would be to narrow the focus of the bill:
I told him if we narrow the focus. Let’s just say we aren’t going to fix everything – in fact I don’t think that everything is fixable now.
But let’s say we’re going to try and repeal as much as we can of Obamacare and then we’re gonna work with the Democrats over the next six months to try and fix any remaining problems.
I think once it’s no longer a debate about repeal, but when it’s a debate later on about how we fix healthcare, then maybe there can be some bipartisan coming together.
But Obamacare is in such terrible straits we should try and repeal as much as we can now of the taxes, the regulations, and see if we can do something to patch up Medicaid until we can get to a position to where we can fix it.
As far as what he said about McConnell’s office:
So far the Senate leadership is not negotiation with our office. I’m trying to negotiate with the president, but really the president is going to have to tell leadership they’re going to have to negotiate with some of us who don’t see this bill as being good for the country.
It’s so frustrating to watch this process play out. Even Rand Paul is now admitting that too many moderate Republican Senators want to keep Obamacare, which makes full repeal impossible.
As with the Freedom Caucus, I don’t blame Paul or Cruz or Lee or anyone else standing in opposition to this bill right now on a conservative basis. Unfortunately I think they are right that full repeal is completely off the table and with so many weak-kneed RINOs in the party, there just isn’t much that can be done in that regard. So all that is left is to get the best we can get, which I hope won’t just be a polished turd when it’s all said and done. But it looks like that’s where we’re headed.