Kellyanne Conway disses struggling Trump Senate candidates: ‘People get really lazy’
‘They are just taking it for granted’
By Paul Kane
5:52 PM MDT June 7, 2017
5:52 PM: It doesn’t take long for Kellyanne Conway to let loose and let down her guard.
“People have been calling me on two coasts and telling me to come back here to DC,” the counselor to President Donald Trump said at the GOP Values Voter Summit yesterday in Iowa.
“They are just taking it for granted that this is the way things are,” Conway said. “And then they go to Washington and make it a little more complicated by adding in the ‘Trump agenda.’ And they don’t understand that the people who helped Trump win are the people who will be standing ready across the street when he comes to Washington to get all of his agenda through.”
Conway’s comments are, of course, true, and they come shortly after the GOP-authored House healthcare bill, which has come into focus for those who watch the Senate closely, was voted out of committee yesterday without so much as a single Democrat in support.
That’s not the only thing that’s new under the sun, however, with the Republican healthcare plan being, as GOP lawmakers like to boast, the only thing the GOP can accomplish on their way to passing the Senate bill.
Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have promised an end to the filibuster for all of the pending healthcare bills, though not immediately. And, as the GOP-backed healthcare bill has already passed the House, the Senate cannot “take it off the table.”
And, most importantly, the Senate can’t change the bill’s contents without the support of a super-majority of Republicans.
That leaves the Trump administration’s Obamacare replacement effort with the White House in a box, with just the House to deal with.
And, yes, the White House has insisted that the Senate must vote on its health care proposal and send it to the president for his signature.
But for the moment, the president and his staff are looking at the House, not the Senate, and trying to use the political and policy expertise and relationships that those in the House have built up over the years, in