The GOP's new plan for repealing Obamacare is a potentially combustible mix of bromides and slogans slapped together with a large dose of the kind of it's so crazy it just might work plotting from the final act of a zany action caper.

If a Hail Mary pass doesn't sound like a great way to handle an overhaul of a giant portion of the economy, well, it's not, for reasons of both politics and substance.

The problem the GOP faces, as The Wall Street Journal reported Monday: "It has become obvious they can't craft a proposal that will carry an easy majority in either chamber." There are simply too many disagreements that they can't iron out and lawmakers are getting wobbly on the subject because their constituents are yelling at them about it. It's now or never, in other words, because if you look too long you never leap.

The GOP solution: Just do it.

Republican leaders are betting that the only way for Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act is to set a bill in motion and gamble that fellow GOP lawmakers won't dare to block it. ... Republican leaders pursuing the "now or never" approach see it as their best chance to break through irreconcilable demands by Republican centrists and conservatives over issues ranging from tax credits to the future of Medicaid.

They can't come to an agreement, so they're just going to do something and gamble that everyone will swallow hard, agree to some compromises and fall in line. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell love it when a plan comes together!

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Granted that repealing Obamacare has been a central organizing principle of the GOP since, pretty much, the Affordable Care Act was being drawn up. That can be a terrifically powerful incentive – maybe strong enough to push this thing over the finish line. But given that the GOP lost seats in both houses in the November elections, they have a very narrow margin for error. Three Republican defectors in the Senate or 23 in the House would sink any plan. "That means any GOP faction could torpedo the repeal effort by withholding its support – and members of each have threatened as much," as the Journal reports. Republican leaders are counting on solidarity and peer pressure to hold everyone together.

There are a number of reasons to think – and to hope – it won't work, however. In the spirit of collegiality I'll try to explain them in slogan and bromide.

First, the GOP made its bed and now must sleep in it. The hallmark of the GOP in the House especially has been fractiousness rebelliousness and a conservative wing that has been unwilling to compromise. That's what powered debt ceiling crises and the government shutdown – all of which were finally resolved when Republican leaders were forced to cut deals to get Democratic support when conservatives wouldn't budge.

And very specifically to Obamacare, the defining characteristic of opposition to the Affordable Care Act has been an unwillingness to compromise. For seven years, there could be no amending, no technical corrections, no improving the law – there could only be repeal. Now, Republican leaders expect to members to set aside their learned inflexibility and start to make compromises for the greater good.

The problem is that the devil is in the details. During the GOP's years of implacable opposition they deployed "repeal-and-replace" messaging as a mantra and a shield: a slogan in place of a policy upon which they were never able to agree. They knew they couldn't simply repeal because, in spite of their rhetorical certitude, Obamacare did do some good things; so they promised a replace and seven years on have never been able to agree upon it. More than seven years on, though: "In the 25 years that I served in the United States Congress, Republicans never, ever, one time agreed on what a health care proposal should look like," former House Speaker John Boehner told a health care conference in Florida. "Not once."

But now, GOP leaders hope, the party will coalesce because their only other choice is not coalescing. And that would be bad because voters would get really, really angry if the party doesn't stand on principle. Except that the voters already are really, really angry; they are in fact sufficiently unhappy that their own representatives are starting to duck them. And no wonder: Repeal will cost 15-25 million people their health insurance (prompting some leading Republicans to start suggesting that a decrease in coverage nationally is actually a desirable outcome); oft-floated elements of a potential GOP replacement plan – repealing the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and capping or block-granting the program – would, as a Washington Post story put it over the weekend, "significantly reduce the number of Americans with health insurance and potentially cost states billions of dollars," according to a report prepared for the National Governors Association.

Oh and hey, not for nothing, more people approve of Obamacare, according to polls, than disapprove of the law. The latest average of polls from HuffPost Pollster gives it 47.8 percent approval and 42.8 disapproval. (For comparison's sake, President Donald Trump – who is, as they say, leading from behind on this issue – is at 42.8-50.6 percent; while Congress is at 15.1-63.5 percent.) So no one should be surprised that constituents are up in arms over the GOP plan – or plan for a plan or plan for hopes for a plan, as the case may be.

The basic message from GOP leaders regarding this urgency, then, is: Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

Of course all of this is why the GOP wants to move quickly: If they don't act now opposition will harden and make action impossible later. This raises the question of why action is so necessary if voters won't like it. The answer probably involves fevered fantasies of paid protesters and misinformation about the eventual GOP proposal. One can almost envision Ryan or McConnell explaining that we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy.

That is, of course, the famous Nancy Pelosi-ism from back when Democrats were sure the protests were artificial and their anger misguided. How'd that turn out?