Can Republicans pass healthcare reform without selling it?

Following the 2004 Election, former President George W. Bush famously declared he had earned "political capital, and now I intend to spend it."

His focus was on overhauling Social Security by giving younger workers the option of diverting money to personal accounts. Bush's sales pitch was on the merits of his plan and how much better the future would be. But in the eyes of most Americans, it was a solution in search of a problem because there was no impending insolvency of Social Security. Rarely does anything get done in Washington without a looming crisis.

The Republicans now face a similar situation on healthcare. As the Republican Senate struggles to cobble together 50 votes from the conservative and moderate wings of their party to repeal and replace Obamacare – barely getting enough votes to even proceed to considering it – what is again noticeably absent is an aggressive and coordinated pitch to the American people of why this needs to happen now.

The trouble with the GOP's healthcare reform effort can be traced back to November 8, 2016. No one expected Trump to win the White House, and so they weren't ready to move on real reforms that would be signed into law. In addition, there seems to be a conventional wisdom that the electorate gave Republicans a mandate during the 2010, 2014, and 2016 elections to eliminate Obamacare; however, stump speeches and campaign ads make for lousy legislative language.

Republicans missed an opportunity to hold hearings, consult experts, and build coalitions and consensus early in the process. Instead, they wasted time on a public internal battle for the soul of the party. The result in the House and recently in the Senate was repeated efforts to rush legislation constructed behind closed doors, without CBO scores, to the floor. Leadership and the White House's expectation was that they could force a vote on the rank-and-file to fulfill a campaign pledge. Now, Sen. Mitch McConnell is going off-script again, moving on a freewheeling process that saw its first version of the bill go down, and could create more chaos on the Senate floor. We will see how this strategy plays out, but in the process, Republicans have only managed to energize the opposition.