In the often confusing semantics of the Republican debate over health care, that translates to: Repair the law first, then devise a replacement, and only once those two events happen would the final repeal of the Affordable Care Act take effect. And for advocating that kind of lengthy, complicated demolition, one of the GOP’s senior-most health-care policymakers finds himself on an island nearly unto himself.

Alexander is chairman of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee—known colloquially on Capitol Hill as the HELP Committee. The panel is one of two in the Senate charged with writing the legislation that will repeal, repair, or otherwise alter Obamacare. Alexander, a 76-year-old Tennessean serving in his third term, has been around the top ranks of the Republican Party for the last four decades; on his resumé are two terms as governor of Tennessee in the 1980s, a stint as education secretary under President George H. W. Bush, and a pair of failed bids for president in 1996 and 2000. Until a few years ago, he served in the Republican leadership in the Senate. When he quit in 2012, he cited the constraints of the partisan post and a desire to be liberated to “spend more time working for results on the issues I care most about” as reasons for resigning.

That decision paid off for Alexander in 2015, when he collaborated with Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington state to rewrite the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind education law, one of the few bipartisan accords in the final years of the Obama administration. And it seems to be informing his willingness to veer away from the party line on immediately ripping up the health law.

He’s actually been advocating his go-slow approach on Obamacare since the first days after the election, when jubilant conservatives were talking about repealing it so quickly that Trump would be able to sign the legislation as soon as he stepped into the Oval Office. Yet with each passing day, more Republicans seem to be inching closer to Alexander’s position. Supporters of the ACA have flooded into town-hall meetings that GOP lawmakers have held in their districts, replicating the Tea Party strategy of 2009 that nearly blew up the law before its enactment in 2010. In leaked audio of a private party meeting in Philadelphia last month, rank-and-file Republicans raised concerns about the political consequences of a hasty repeal. Last week, Bloomberg noted that lawmakers besides Alexander shifted their message from promoting repeal to using the word “repair” in connection with the Affordable Care Act. (They didn’t get there by accident: Polls show there is much broader support for fixing the law than for repealing it entirely.)

And on Sunday, Trump himself seemed to push back his timeline for action on health care, telling Bill O’Reilly in an interview before the Super Bowl that his administration’s plan for fixing the system might not be ready until 2018. The president had previously vowed to deliver a proposal to Congress shortly after his yet-to-be-confirmed health secretary, Tom Price, took office. While the House and Senate have taken the first steps toward fast-tracking repeal, actual legislation is not close to coming up for a vote.