Healthcare debacle black eye for GOP

Democrats are no doubt reveling in the Republicans’ failure to put a healthcare bill together, or any other meaningful legislation for that matter.
    What Republican would have ever thought that when the GOP gained control of all three branches of government they would get nothing done!
    You hear of animals whose mothers will eat their young. Well, a similar analogy could be used to compare what the Republican Party is doing to itself in the U.S. Senate right now.
    After a Republican-controlled House of Representatives finally cobbled together a healthcare bill to replace Obamacare, the onus shifted to the U.S. Senate.
    How’s that working out for the Republican Party?
    What our Republican leaders don’t seem to understand is that conservatives who live in Imperial, in Chase County, in Nebraska, in rural America, want and expect results from their elected leaders. This matters to us.
    Instead, we get senators who like to grandstand, for whatever reason, and break ranks with their party and their constituents.
    Perhaps they think if they hold out, they can muster their own form of the Cornhusker kickback. That move ultimately cost Sen. Ben Nelson his job in Washington.
    Republicans in Congress seem to have forgotten that ever since Obamacare was adopted, they continually pledged to get rid of it. Now, with a golden opportunity at their feet, they stomp on it instead.
    People in the Heartland care about what’s happening with our government. These officials need to remember they are “elected” officials  and can be replaced at the ballot box.
    Ever since Ben Sasse won election to the  U.S. Senate, I’ve been withholding my judgement on his performance.
    When he came to Imperial to campaign, he brought the 2000 or so pages of the Obamacare bill. He noted he’d read every page and was most critical of the bill. He pledged he’d do everything he could to get the bill repealed. It helped get him elected.
    Now’s the time for him, Sen. Deb Fisher and their colleagues to show some real leadership by bringing the GOP senators together. Repeal and replace Obamacare, or at least repeal it, and the GOP can save face and save President Trump’s agenda.    
    If the Republicans fail to get something done on Obamacare, their control of all three branches will be short-lived.
    Even here in the hinterlands, we closely watch what goes on in Washington. It’s time our elected officials remember it’s us little people they represent and that we’re the ones who sent them to Washington in the first place.