Is There Still A Chance That There Will Be Repug Defections When The Bill Comes To The Floor?.....

[global1]

Will at the last minute some Repugs chicken out and vote no?

What gun is being held to their heads to vote yes on this?

[kentuck]

1. The Trump gun.

The threat of being primaried.

[Freethinker65]

2. Threat to withhold campaign funds is my guess

[Va Lefty]

3. They would not bring it to the floor for a vote if the were not sure of winning

[Demsrule86]

5. This time they might.

[still_one]

6. Those are my thoughts also

[gratuitous]

7. Ordinarily, I'd say that's true

But with this bunch of stumblebums, who can say for sure? We know that their margin for error is razor thin, less than five total votes, and right now the Capitol switchboard is smoking from all the constituent calls.

It occurs to me that there's also a possibility that the Republicans may want to have a failed floor vote just to get Trump off this hobbyhorse. That route is perilous as well, because every Republican who votes for this bill is going to have it hung around his neck like an albatross for the next 18 months. But it might be deemed an acceptable trade-off, thinking that they can repair any damage from a failed vote over 18 months, but having to put up with Lord Littlehands' constant hectoring hurts them short-term and long-term.

[Demsrule86]

4. There is still a chance...people have been calling and not every GOP has committed...Ryan does not

have the votes on paper yet.

[Jno_Gilmor_]

8. NBC has a running count of "votes"...

We need 23 nays

So far:

17 nay
19 undecided

This is probably an approximate, but if 5 more chicken out it fails!

[Bleacher Creature]

9. It's happened before, but it's HIGHLY unlikely.

It would be a massive embarrassment; worse than if they just pull it altogether. I really doubt that they would have brought it to the floor without knowing the votes are locked down.