This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The GOP drive to destroy Obamacare took another hit on Thursday morning, when conservative Sen. Tom Cotton tweeted that the House GOP repeal-and-replace bill is probably dead on arrival in the Senate. Cotton even called on his House colleagues to "start over." The Arkansas Republican is an ally of Trump — who favors the GOP bill — so this is somewhat significant.

But fear not: if the GOP repeal drive does fail in Congress, Trump has a secret, backup plan to kill the Affordable Care Act. And it's actually a pretty good plan, if you view it from the point of view of Trump and many Republicans.

CNN reports on Trump's clever new scheme:

"In an Oval Office meeting featuring several leaders of conservative groups already lining up against the House Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, President Donald Trump revealed his plan in the event the GOP effort fails: Allow Obamcare to fail and let Democrats take the blame, sources at the gathering told CNN."

If you think about it, this actually makes sense. If the law survives, Trump can spend the next couple of years claiming that it is collapsing all around us — or rather that it continues to collapse, since it is already collapsing as we speak. And Republican voters will of course believe that this is the case, since it is an unshakable truism for them that the law has already failed in spectacular fashion.

Meanwhile, conservatives in Congress will say the same thing. As one GOP aide put it to me Thursday: "Many conservatives believe Obamacare already failed, so we'll echo him."

The beauty of this outcome is that it would keep intact an arrangement that has worked quite well for Republicans for years: They can continue to rail at the evils of the ACA, without having to deal with the fallout of it actually being repealed.

The story of the moment is that this cozy arrangement is getting disrupted rather violently. The challenges that attend fashioning an actual repeal-and-replace bill have ripped the lid off of a rift among Republicans that remained safely hidden out of sight while repeal was an impossibility.

On one side of this divide are conservatives (mostly in the House) who actually want the ACA repealed, because they are philosophically opposed to the spending and regulating necessary to expand coverage in the manner Obamacare has. On the other are Republicans (mostly senators and governors) who now have to say they want repeal — after all, they demanded this for years in the abstract — while also moving to limit the rollback of coverage that results, particularly in their own states. Thus it is that many of the senators and governors who have expressed skepticism about the House GOP plan come from states that have expanded Medicaid.

The current House GOP plan tries to give each of these camps a way to claim they are getting their way, but it ends up giving neither one enough. It continues to spend and regulate, so it's a nonstarter for conservatives, especially House Republicans in very safe districts who will be insulated from the political fallout of millions losing coverage. But that huge looming coverage loss means Republicans who represent whole states have to worry about them taking a huge hit. The difficulty in bridging this gap is illustrated by this nugget of CNN reporting:

"Sources at the meeting said White House aides showed some openness to one aspect of the House GOP plan that has become an irritant to tea party aligned groups: the provision that pushes back an overhaul of the expansion Obamacare Medicaid funding until 2020."

In other words, the White House might be willing to start phasing out the Medicaid expansion earlier to make conservatives happy. But this would mean that the fallout hits right amid the 2018 midterm elections, something that could not only impact the congressional and Senate races, but also the hugely consequential 2018 gubernatorial contests, in which repeal of the Medicaid expansion could create major complications.

Meanwhile, it's not crazy to imagine that conservatives might prefer for the current repeal effort to fail, at least in its current form. As Jonathan Chait notes, if it goes through, the GOP will have given its philosophical stamp of approval to government spending and regulating, albeit in a more limited form. If the public responds with outrage at the lost coverage, there could be a push to restore it — and this battle would unfold on philosophical turf that the GOP has already ceded. Indeed, this is likely a key reason why conservatives want the current bill to fail. And needless to say, if it does fail, and the ACA lives on, conservatives can continue to say it's a horrific failure — no matter what actually happens — thus proving them right about the folly of government efforts to expand coverage.

Now, obviously, many Republicans — and Trump — almost certainly prefer for the current bill to pass. Trump hates losing, and Republicans don't want their voters to see them fail to deliver the glorious moment of liberation they have anticipated for years. But if they do fail to deliver, Trump's backup plan has its virtues, too.