“We are looking for solutions,” said Young, who until recently chaired the Senate Republican campaign and is eager to return to policy.
Mr. Schatz, who is friendly with some of these senators, makes a finer point of their motivation: “If I’m going to suffer through the Trump era, I might as well pass laws. ‘
In Louisiana, however, the thoroughly-transformed Republican Party expects only continued allegiance to the former president.
Mr. Cassidy received immediate criticism on Tuesday for his voice and comments.
“I received a lot of calls this afternoon from Republicans in Louisiana who think that @SenBillCassidy did a ‘terrible job’ today,” said Blake Miguez, the Republican leader of the State House, posted on Twitter, which criticizes Mr. Cassidy on the advocates of mr. “I understand their frustrations and disappoint them.”
Even a fellow Louisiana delegation member, Mike Johnson, weighed in. “A lot of people from home are calling me about it now,” he said. Johnson, a Republican, remarked that he was ‘surprised’ by Mr Cassidy’s move.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been.
As Stephanie Grace, the longtime political columnist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, wrote in a December piece in which Cassidy’s move was predicted, he’s long been part of two-party efforts to solve problems, albeit his solutions are probably too far a few Republicans and do not fall short of what many Democrats want. “
Mr. Cassidy, a former Democrat like Kennedy and many Southern Republicans of their age, had long since ceased to be dogmatic about health care, a position he formed in his charity hospitals in his state. It has always been more than a little ironic for political insiders in Louisiana since he withdrew Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, in 2014, thanks to conservative attacks on former President Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act. (On Wednesday, Ms Landrieu said of Mr Cassidy: “Many people in Louisiana are proud of him, including me.”)