Clip: Mitch McConnell’s health care balancing act

One of the books that sits on my shelf is called “The Long Game.” It’s by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It talks about how he’s been a strategist for his entire career. He thinks about politics. He thinks about consequences. Boy, does the majority leader have a puzzle for himself right now in the upper chamber. How he will he get the necessary votes to pass this Republican health care plan? He has to balance moderates on one side like Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who has deep concerns about how the legislation would affect her voters, her constituents, people who rely on Medicaid. At the same time, McConnell has to look to the right and wonder about Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Rand Paul from his home state of Kentucky. They’re not happy with the Affordable Care Act and the regulations it puts on states. So as the majority leader looks at all this, as he surveys the scene, he has to think, ‘How can I get Cruz and Collins on the same bill? How can I keep everyone in line and something that’s passable, should we get it out of the Senate, passable in the U.S. House?’ It’s a difficult situation, but he seems to be doing what all Republicans are doing when I’m up on Capitol Hill which is to fulfill the promise, to fulfill the promise they made long ago back in 2009 and 2010 to repeal the Affordable Care Act, replace it with something different. McConnell is under some pressure from the base, but not so much from President Trump. The president is looking at McConnell to get it done. But there’s a real eagerness inside of the West Wing to move on to infrastructure, to trade, to tax reform. Health care is a box to be checked not necessarily a long endeavor that the White House and Senate Republicans want to go through. McConnell hasn’t really showed a lot of his cards. He’s pulled the bill from the floor from having a vote this past week. For now, we’re just going to have to wait and see. Can this majority leader, the man with the long game, the master strategist, the master of the Senate as his friends say, get it done?