Pray for a unified voice in solving our healthcare problems in the U.S. There are many people who need assistance and need to be cared for who are getting lost in the heat of unsettled disputes.

“And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Gen. 12:3)

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The Republican Senate’s failure to repeal or replace Obamacare is more than simply a stunning condemnation of Republican voters and the administration….

Spurred on by the tea party, repeal and replacement of Obamacare has been a staple party promise since 2010. It is nevertheless difficult to uncover exactly what the party opposed. If someone had asked Republicans and Republican-leaning voters why Obamacare was so heinous, they likely would have been unable to say more than that “it”—whatever they thought Obamacare was—wasn’t a proper thing for government to do.

This soft libertarianism underlay all of the party’s pronouncements for the seven lean years after Obamacare’s passage. Once the GOP held both houses of Congress and the White House, the political famine was theoretically over. In practice, the failure to define why Obamacare was bad meant there was no agreement on what, if anything, should take its place.

The failure to pass a bill shows starkly that the party is unable to say what it is for. It could not agree, or even come close to agreeing, whose health insurance government should subsidize, or how much those subsidies should be, or what types of insurance policies could receive those subsidies. In the end, the only thing repeal had going for it was a sense of political tribalism, that “our voters” wanted “it” regardless of what “it” actually entailed.

But not every senator faces the same mix of voters. The narrow loss of what was called “skinny repeal” shows this in spades.

The three Republican senators who voted no all were not dependent upon conservative voters for their nominations or reelections. Sen. Susan Collins represents Maine, a moderate state that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988. Her dependence on non-Republicans was well-known, and her “No” vote was expected.

Lisa Murkowski and John McCain, however, represent Republican and conservative states. But each has been the subject of bitter challenges from tea party–backed conservatives recently. Murkowski has twice won general election victories—2010 and 2016—over a libertarian-conservative, Joe Miller….

McCain was also challenged in 2016 from the right. While he won renomination, he still lost nearly half of the vote to three more-conservative challengers….

The Republican Party is now at a crossroads. Being against liberalism and crass political pressure can only take it so far…. (By Henry Olsen from World Magazine —Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the author of The Working Class Republican)