Graham-Cassidy ain't dead yet

John McCain came out against Lindsey Graham's and Bill Cassidy's ACA repeal bill. He's the third Republican senator to announce his opposition, meaning that Republicans don't have the fifty votes they need to pass the bill before a 30 September deadline imposes a 60-vote requirement. Cue the jubilation among the Affordable Care Act's supporters, right?

I wouldn't be so sure.

Mitch McConnell announced that a floor vote would take place next Wednesday, the 27th. Granting that five days isn't much time, it's still enough time for McConnell to find an inducement for McCain if the majority leader wants McCain's vote badly enough. It's also enough time for McConnell and others to work on Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, whose opposition to the bill isn't quite as firm as Democrats'.

Bottom line: we've been here before. The Republican zeal to kill the ACA is bottomless. There are also external pressures on the party to follow through on what it has made one of its defining goals for the last eight years.

This zombie keeps coming back, and it won't stop until Republicans stop thinking of repeal as one of their party's core principles.

To speed the party along, I'd like to remind both Republican voters and Republican politicians that you should always be guided by what's best for the country. You have been unable to convince yourselves, much less the rest of us, that your proposals to kill the ACA would be a net boon for the country. You Republican politicians sound like utterly amoral party hacks: "If we do nothing [to repeal the ACA], I think it has a tremendous impact on the 2018 elections. And whether or not Republicans still maintain control and we have the gavel." Jesus H. Christ, you want to repeal because it's good for your election prospects, repeal's effects on actual people be damned?

You politicians have lost all perspective. You hold to your principles because a generation of far-right voters have lost their perspective: they deem keeping promises more important than getting anything done. They (and you) have forgotten that not everyone else agrees with them and that sometimes you have to compromise; indeed, they've turned "compromise" into an expletive, an accusation to be shot like a bullet at anyone who dares to seek common ground.

If Democrats finally came to terms with some of Reagan's policies, Republicans can come to terms with some of Obama's. You guys have got to give up on trying to erase the first black president from history. Get over your visceral distaste for him and figure out what else you can do that doesn't alienate over half the country, for crying out loud.

Until that happens, the rest of us will have to keep our axes sharp and shotguns loaded because that damned zombie will keep coming back.