denede ne defections of more than two in the senate. a lot of efforts in the coming months will be a critical period as well. it sure will be, manu raju, thank you for that. senior political contributor michael nutter, the former democratic mayor of philadelphia, and beverly hallberg, a conservative strategist attending cpac. beverly, you heard john boehner say that, basically it s not going to happen, and you just heard donald trump. he was talking about we re going to make it better. how is that any different than the repair and rebrand that boehner is talking about? well, i do think it takes time. you talked about march being a pivotal month. it no doubt will be. but if you talk to anyone here at cpac, i think they would agree with me, there is a reason that john boehner is no longer speaker of the house, and that is because he didn t want to lead the republican party.
conservative box around it. and according to boehner, he says repair and rebrand might be a more appropriate mantra. his comments coming as his old colleagues have yet to settle on a replacement plan and as they re getting a lot of flack from angry constituents at town hall meetings. i want to bring in cnn senior congressional reporter manu raju. how are republicans responding to this from boehner? reporter: they re pushing back, brianna. they feel they have to fulfill this central campaign promise to repeal and replace obamacare. when you talk to to republicans privately, they do believe what boehner is saying is probably more like what is going to happen. if they re even successful at repealing parts of obamacare, they can only do it 0 on a piecemeal basis and replace the law on a piecemeal basis. it s not going to happen in one fell swoop. it may be just an effort to fix elements of the law that are not working. still, the republican leaders are pushing back, including
senate majority leader mitch mcconnell, who wassked about this yesterday. reporter: senator, former speaker john boehner predicted that obamacare repeal and replacement isn t going to happen. is he wrong? predicted what? reporter: speaker boehner this morning predicted that repeal and replacement isn t going to happen. i sure hope he s wrong. we need to do that. it s a commitment we made to the american people and we need to keep it. reporter: now, expect march to be a critical time for the republicans in congress to start that process of repealing obamacare, replacing obamacare. but the question, brianna, is whether or not any of the lawmakers who have been getting an earful back home from their constituents, whether they change their minds at all. because there is a very small margin for error in the house and the senate, if there are
talking about we re going to make it better, we re going to repeal and replace it. that was interesting because we re seeing new poll numbers actually from two different places including the kaiser family foundation, and it is showing pew has done some of these, it is showing that the approval of obamacare is at a record high. i mean, the kaiser family foundation i think has done 60 of these tracking polls. and this is the highest that they ve seen it right now. yes, and we see a lot of the energy in these town halls were folks are showing up, really railing against republicans particularly about health care. what are they going to do about health care, what is their plan to repeal and to replace. we saw of course jn boehner, the former speaker of the house, essentially say there is no repeal and replace, there will essentially be some sort of fix to obamacare. and this, of course, the fixing of obamacare, is what hillary clinton ran on, right? this idea that they were going
and then wage was surge. the price of commodities would surge. there is your constraint. just found it. you hit the point where you re putting too much money into real resources then you get the push back against what government does. it s not about money running out. fwz too few goods being in there to absorb that money. let s get back to something resembling reality. let s say the white house does start to make noises about doing. this again, it seems incredibly unlikely. let s say they did. or let s say this time around they don t. but it s another disastrous debt ceiling showdown and the next time, you know, jn boehner gives them a monday, right? this is grover norquist s idea. that clip where he says the leverage will have this. there are debt ceilings for a little bit. so let s say we get to a point where they say you no he what? this has become a habit now. we can t deal with. this we re going to seriously pursue this trillion dollar coin