Jim Newell has the same view I do; that most Republican senators, even though they voted to kill it, didn't really want to repeal Obamacare. If they'd repealed it, they would have had to replace it with something better and it's pretty clear they can't do that.
William Saletan sees John McCain's speech of the other night as a road map out of Trumpism. I agree with the expressed recommendations and like most folks, can list all too many ways Senator McCain has done the opposite. But I think Saletan is wrong to identify the movement as "Trumpism." It was there before Donald Trump was part of our political scene and if he disappeared tomorrow, it would still be there in full force.
Ezra Klein explains — quite well, I think — why Republican attempts to repeal/replace Obamacare failed. They operated from the false premise that Obamacare was a disaster and the public would be pleased to have anything else…and they couldn't even agree among themselves what that "anything else" should be.
Andrew Prokop summarizes the chaos of the Trump administration. And Matt Taibbi predicts the quick failure and ouster of the new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci. I'm thinking Trump may keep the guy around longer than Taibbi thinks so as to not have to break in a new laughingstock right away.
Two years ago, who among us would have imagined that the President of the United States would address a convention of Boy Scouts and then the Boys Scouts organization would find it necessary to issue an apology for the President's speech?
The speech to the Boy Scouts was one of the scarier things I've heard out of Trump. Even scarier was the speech he recently gave to a group of police officers, urging them to get tougher on criminals. Actually, in practical terms, he was suggesting they get tougher on people suspected of being criminals, which is not the same thing. I've always thought of myself as pro-police and as I think I mentioned here recently, I think the "bad cops" are exceptions. The reaction of the crowd to Trump's rhetoric makes me wonder a bit.