David Hogberg is pleased with Senators Rand Paul, Jerry Moran, and Mike Lee for sinking the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). Hogberg believes that “McConnellCare,” as he has dubbed it, needed to be scuttled and that these alleged Republicans, along with Maine RINO Susan Collins, have done the nation a service by sending a torpedo into its hull.

David Hogberg is a smart guy, and I agree with him most of the time. On this issue, however, I think he’s got it wrong. More importantly, I doubt the voters who go down with the ship will be very happy with the handiwork of these four Senators when they discover that BCRA was their last chance to be rescued from the rapidly sinking “Affordable Care Act.”

And BCRA was the last realistic chance to rescue the voters from Obamacare, which has been taking on water since it was launched. The Democrats have no plan to keep it afloat, beyond buoying it up with money, and neither do Senators Paul, Moran, Lee, or Collins. Here’s an example of Senator Paul’s “thoughts” on the matter as brayed to Breitbart News:

I’m encouraged that we’re moving towards a clean repeal… we’re going to vote on what we voted on in 2015. It’s a partial repeal… but it’s the very least they ought to do. Any senator who voted for this in 2015, if they’re not willing to vote for it they need to explain to the voters at home why they’re not for full repeal.

Paul is thus for partial repeal, yet demands that other Republicans explain any reluctance to support full repeal. Despite this gibberish, Paul is smart enough to know that no bill that he claims to favor will pass. He obviously likes the status quo. That’s why he thwarted a 2015 investigation into the fraud by which Congress obtained its exemption from Obamacare.

As for Senator Mike Lee, Avik Roy provides this brutally accurate assessment of his duplicity and ever-evolving rhetoric over at Forbes. To save you some reading, the gist of Roy’s piece is that Senator Lee has experimented with more positions on repeal and replace than there are illustrations in the Kama Sutra. But it was the hapless voters who got… well… the shaft.

What about Moran? Like his two colleagues from the Goldilocks Caucus, Senators Paul, and Lee, he has a taste for multiple positions. He has been consistent only in finding one excuse after another not to support the bill. Moran’s statements on repeal range from Schumer-like laments about the “closed door process” that yielded BCRA to utterly meaningless bromides:

We should not put our stamp of approval on bad policy… We must now start fresh with an open legislative process to develop innovative solutions that provide greater personal choice, protections for pre-existing conditions, increased access and lower overall costs.

Ironically, the refusal of Senator Collins to support BCRA is easier to explain than are the disingenuous positions of Senators Paul, Lee, and Moran. Unlike these three frauds, she doesn’t pretend to be a conservative. She’s a RINO who likes Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and will never vote for a bill that reforms that unsustainable program. At least she’s honest.

I agree that BCRA was flawed. But, had it passed, the Republicans would have something to show for all the empty rhetoric of Rand Paul, Jerry Moran, Mike Lee, et al. These characters have insisted on giving voters 100 percent of nothing. David Hogberg thinks they can “go back to drawing board on health care reform.” I doubt it. 2018 is going to be a massacre.