“Obamacare smashed,” blared a headline on the Breitbart News homepage. “GOP victory,” declared one on LifeZette.
A headline on Newsmax, however, described passage of a Republican health-care bill Thursday as merely a “step toward Obamacare repeal.” And the Weekly Standard summarized the vote like this: “Republicans shove health bill across finish line.”
The bill's reception in the conservative press was mixed in the immediate aftermath of a 217-to-213 vote, with some outlets celebrating the result as a promise fulfilled by President Trump and others focusing on the hurried process and stiff challenge ahead in the Senate.
One major takeaway: House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) just can't get any love from Breitbart — not even on a day like this.
“Speaker Meadows?” asked a second headline on the hard right website, referring to Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who chairs the House's conservative Freedom Caucus.
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Breitbart's Sean Moran wrote that “after Speaker Paul D. Ryan failed to accumulate enough Republican support” for a prior health-care bill, in March, Meadows “stepped up and brokered a revised version of the bill.”
Moran added this: “Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and others have worked alongside congressional Republicans, especially Meadows — who has emerged as a force in the negotiating process so strong that some have begun calling him the acting speaker of the House in the wake of Ryan's failures — to bring the new bill to the brink of passage.”
Conservative outlets can't seem to agree on the magnitude of health-care policy changes contained in the just-passed legislation.
An article on TheBlaze reported that the “latest version of the American Health Care Act … would repeal and replace Obamacare.”
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Meanwhile, the Daily Caller told readers that the bill falls short of the “repeal and replace” standard: “House Republicans finally passed a bill to change portions of the health-care system Thursday, after years of campaigning on a platform to repeal and replace Obamacare.”
Washington Post reporters Though Republicans have for years spoken of repealing the ACA as a prime goal, the legislation would stop short of outright eliminating the 2010 health-care law enacted by a Democratic Congress and the Obama administration. Nevertheless, it would make a significant dent in large portions of current law.”
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