Colorado

TexasTowelie

(116,773 posts) Thu Jul 27, 2017, 12:36 AM Jul 2017

Gardner Stops Pretending that He's Voting for Coloradans

Cory Gardner isn’t even pretending anymore.

The Republican Senator from Yuma once touted himself as a moderate voice who would always protect the interests of Coloradans in the U.S. Senate, using this carefully-crafted centrist message to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Udall in 2014. We’ve written plenty of words in this space about “Con Man Cory” and his endless slithering around taking definitive policy positions, but now that the healthcare legislation debate has finally reached the Senate floor, Gardner’s actions and votes have exposed him as nothing more than a partisan yes-man for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Senate Republicans needed Vice President Mike Pence to cast the tiebreaking vote on Tuesday just to allow them to formally discuss healthcare legislation on the Senate floor. We’re now in the “vote-o-rama” stages of healthcare policy sausage-making, and Gardner is voting “YES” on everything Senate leadership tells him to support — including supporting BCRA legislation with the “Cruz amendment” that would have all completely gutted Medicaid (the proposal failed on the floor Wednesday night, despite Gardner’s support).

As the Denver Post writes, Gardner is still comically evasive in answering questions even as he casts one “YES” vote after another:

After voting with his Republican colleagues Tuesday to begin debate on GOP plans to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, the Colorado lawmaker refused to reveal which of the competing proposals he found most appealing: a straight repeal, some version of the repeal-and-replace bill that Senate Republicans have discussed for weeks or a new idea to remove just a few parts of the ACA, also known as Obamacare…

…The ambiguity is in line with how Gardner has approached the debate overall. For weeks, Gardner has spoken mostly in generalities; one exception was his recent support of per capita caps on Medicaid spending.