Karl Rove pinpoints flaw in conservatives’ health plan: ‘Eight Democrats’

Republican strategist and Fox News contributor Karl Rove argued Tuesday that the desire of conservative lawmakers to completely repeal Obamacare is impossible because it would never get through the Senate, where there are only 52 Republicans, and where 60 votes would be needed to pass a full repeal.

Rove said on Fox that Republicans should therefore take the plan being developed by House GOP leaders to start dismantling Obamacare though the budget reconciliation process.

Rove was responding to Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who argued last week that Republicans promised full repeal, not partial repeal. But Rove noted that the GOP bill under consideration takes real steps in the right direction, and is able to actually become law.

He noted, for example, that conservatives want to end the individual and corporate insurance mandates. He said the GOP bill gets close by zeroing out the penalties now being imposed for people and companies who don’t adhere to the mandate.

“This does it in a way that allows you to pass it through the Senate with 51,” he said. Under the budget reconciliation process, Republicans can make changes related to spending as long as they don’t touch policy, and get that through with 51 votes in the Senate.

Attacking the law directly by scrapping the mandates altogether, he said, would require 60 votes in the Senate, and thus would be nearly impossible given the current membership in the upper chamber.

“The version that I suspect [Meadows] favors would repeal the language from the law altogether, and that would require 60 votes in the Senate,” he said. “If he thinks he’s got eight Democrats in his back pocket waiting for vote for this in the Senate, all he’s got to do is tell us that.”