the fence. vice president pence has already started doing that. we might see president trump in west virginia, in shelly moore capito s backyard in ohio, trying to put pressure on areas where he s still popular so senators have to reconsider whether they should openly cross president trump. reporting yesterday here coming out of politico, dan, was mitch mcconnell, senate majority leader saying i m going to go for the repeal, just the repeal alone. what is your understanding of that probability, and what are the other options that he might do in the repeal and the replace? well, the straight repeal was something senate republicans voted on two years ago, and nearly every senator, the only republican who held out was susan collins. nearly every other senator voted for that, but times have changed. and many of the holdout senators are ones who can wait out the trump presidency. collins isn t up for re-election
if there s one thing we know, it s mick mitch mcconnell is a crafty sob and i m sure he s got a lot of amendments and proposals in his back pocket to offer these senators in order to get their votes. i m sure you ve talked about this already that the statements from these holdout senators were very, very carefully worded. they never said we re absolutely against this by they said i m against it now, but with certain changes i could support it in the future. is he going to have to appeal to the conservatives or moderates of the senate. i think he ll have to appeal to broth. by and large the things that the conservative senators want and the things that the moderate senators want are not mutually exclusive. the moderates are concerned about exactly how the medicaid expansion repeal of obamacare will phase down. the conservative senators are much more concerned about