Brian Beutler of the New Republic described what Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Republicans have planned for their health care bill – aka Trumpcare – as "the legislative equivalent of a mugging." That sounds about right. Senate Republicans are poised to steal health care from millions of Americans and hand it to rich people in the form of a tax cut – and they're doing it in secret.

In the Senate alone, Obamacare had 80 days of transparency – 36 days of hearings, 18 days of bill markup, 26 days and 270 hours of Senate floor debate. If Senate Republicans get their way, Trumpcare will get 20 hours of floor debate. That's it. For legislation affecting one-sixth of the entire US economy.

No one even knows what's in the bill except for the Senate Republicans – including Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, who is reportedly one of the people writing whatever cruel travesty of a policy emerges in its final form. On Wednesday, McConnell invoked a rule bypassing the entire regular legislative procedure for a Senate bill. There will be no hearings, no committee markups, no public testimony, no input from physicians, nurses, hospitals, insurers or the public. Just a giant middle finger to the democratic process and the people who rely on Obamacare to keep them alive.

This is banana republic stuff, folks. And Gardner is in the middle of it. He's also afraid of facing his constituents by holding a town hall and answering their questions about Trumpcare face-to-face – although he was more than happy to have a personal meeting and photo op with murderous Philippine dictator Rodrigo Duterte.

Gardner's Democratic counterpart, Sen. Michael Bennet, has had 13 town halls and counting – three on Friday alone. I can guarantee you not all the questions were polite. But rude questions come with the job, especially when Gardner is trying to take Coloradans' health care away.

But should it really be surprising that a party whose president displays a routine contempt for the rule of law should display a similar contempt themselves? Trumpcare is enormously unpopular – a Quinnipiac poll found 62 percent of voters opposed, and only 17 percent in support. No wonder McConnell and Senate Republicans are trying to mug the process and run away. They're counting on getting away with it before the public knows what they're doing.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri rightfully called this out in front of the Senate Finance Committee on which she serves. She confronted Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on the status of the bill and bluntly told him, when he admitted there wouldn't be a hearing and mumbled something about "input":

I watched carefully all of the hearings that went on [when the Affordable Care Act was crafted]. I was not a member of this committee at the time, although I would have liked to be. [Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa] was the ranking member. Dozens of Republican amendments were offered and accepted in that hearing process.

And when you say that you're inviting us – and we heard you, Mr. Secretary, just say, 'We'd love your support' – for what? We don't even know. We have no idea what's being proposed. There's a group of guys in a back room somewhere that are making these decisions. There were no hearings in the House.

I mean, listen, this is hard to take. Because I know we made mistakes [when the ACA came together], Mr. Secretary. And one of the criticisms we got over and over again that the vote was partisan. Well you couldn't have a more partisan exercise than what you're engaged in right now. We're not even going to have a hearing on a bill that impacts one-sixth of our economy. We're not going to have an opportunity to offer a single amendment. It is all being done with an eye to try to get it by with 50 votes and the vice president.