Fox News political commentator Charles Krauthammer on Tuesday night called the collapse of an Obamacare repeal and replace effort "an epic fail" for the GOP.
In comments on Fox News' "Special Report with Bret Baier," the syndicated columnist bemoaned "seven years of arguing gone down the drain."
"This is historic. . . . And I think we're at the end of the road, at least in this phase . . . on the replacement," he said.
"The idea that they're going to get a repeal bill standing alone, when repeal and replace was meant to mitigate the effects of repeal, is ridiculous," he continued. "It is not going to pass. They know it's not going to pass. It's a bluff."
According to Krauthammer, there were three reasons why the repeal-and-replace effort fizzled.
"The first is that unless you give an entitlement, which is what Obamacare did, you almost never can retrieve it and then abandon it," he said. "The second is, there was no presidential leadership. . . . Did anybody make the case for what was in this bill in the Senate other than it was a promise?
"The last is that it shows a divide between the moderates and the conservatives" in both chambers, among Republicans. "It's almost unbridgeable, and there's no room to adjudicate the split. The moderates are afraid of the curtailment of Medicaid, and the conservatives are the ones who want the curtailment of Medicaid as an entitlement out-of-control.
"You put those together, and you get an epic fail."
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