https://youtube.com/watch?v=_mKUmXgSTa4
With the health-care vote looming, Charles Krauthammer said that, while everything isn’t riding on it, President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan could be severely damaged if their own party repudiates them by voting against the bill:
Well, it’s a little early in the presidency to say “make or break.” But it would certainly really damage the Trump presidency. And that’s why I think, in the end, these things happen in every presidency, but when you have the fate of a presidency and the fate of a speakership hanging on the vote, it’s hard to see that in the end his own party is going to repudiate them.
We saw in the early nineties, beginning of the Clinton administration, he had a tax hike that went down to the last minute, and one member of Congress, Marjorie Mezvinsky was her name, was the one vote that put Clinton over the top. She lost her seat as a result of that. But I would add as a happy note, she gained a daughter-in-law since her son married to Chelsea. I’m not sure that’s going to happen in this case.
I think, in the end, there is so much at stake, and I think there is this Cruz option where he is suggesting that they take a risk and add a change in what is called the coverage mandate — all of the things that Obamacare requires that you have in your plan, which is the worst part of the deal, that they are promising now the HHS secretary will take out. But the Conservatives are saying a new HHS secretary could restore it, so we want it in the law. I think that would be a reasonable offer to give conservatives. And that would ensure its passage.