Transcript: Marjorie Taylor Greene Tirade Wrecks Trump Shutdown Stance

Ornstein: I would be stunned if they did, Greg, because remember, we have had a mantra now for years, “repeal and replace.” And there’s never been a “replace.” They’ve got no way of dealing with this other than a sham set of proposals, which will give you really cheap insurance, but it’s really cheap because it doesn’t cover anything. And if you ever try to invoke it, the insurance companies will say, sorry, either you have a pre-existing condition because you had a hangnail, which is what we had before the Affordable Care Act, or look at the fine print that’s not covered. So they’ve got no plan.

So we’re not going to see anything other than a sham unless they ultimately have to cave and give in on those subsidies. And whether they’re going to give in on some of the horrible changes in Medicaid, I don’t know. Democrats, though, have to get out there and they need to go to hospitals and they need to go to red districts and states and they need to make it clear, day after day after day, what the stakes are here and where the parties are. And if that happens, Republicans are in a bad place, I believe.

Sargent: Yeah. And I think Marjorie Taylor Greene actually exposed something else as well, which is that there are really serious cracks in the MAGA coalition about this. If you think about the two pieces of policy, the big pieces of policy that are on the table right now, one, whether the expanded Obamacare subsidies will expire, and two, whether Democrats can somehow get Republicans to roll back their Medicaid cuts from the big ugly bill that Trump signed: Those are very hyper directed at the MAGA base in the sense that MAGA voters, Trump voters, will get very badly hurt by the expiration of the subsidies and also by the Medicaid cuts, which are looming in the distance.