Paris   Nothing like a couple of weeks on the road, three countries, a half-dozen or so cities, and the siren song of home, heat, and humidity all sounds better and better. Of course there’s no escaping the headlines or the occasional questions from random people from all walks of life about what thoughts we might have on Trump. As excited as people around the world were about Obama as president, they are mystified by Trump. They are not alone.

The Republican Senate’s efforts to not just repeal-and-replace Obamacare, but to cap entitlements for Medicaid and pretty much kick the teeth out of the poor, elderly, disabled, and others seems to have alienated a couple of senators, while others wanted a chance to run up and kick harder and go for the kill. The New York Times reported that Senator Portman from Ohio has been a huge problem behind-the-scenes for the Republican majority leader and his efforts to pull together the votes. Seems he was concerned about what might happen to 700,000 people in Ohio that had gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Wow! That’s a good question for a lot of politicians from a lot of states it would seem. Turns out that when you push Humpty Dumpty off the wall, it really is hard to put the pieces back again.

And, in fact as the votes collapsed on the latest Senate version, there was an even greater implosion on the latest Trump twitter tantrum urging just repeal and deal a couple of years down the road. Seems immediately three Republican women in the Senate from West Virginia, Maine, and Alaska said the equivalent of “what are you pulling my leg,” saying that it would be reckless and irresponsible to simply repeal and blow the Act up.

Many of the Republican governors with shorter terms and quicker elections who are forced to be closer to their constituents also got their back up on these draconian cuts and caps in Nevada, Ohio, and elsewhere. They have earned some thanks as well.

I wish there were a lesson learned on the order of “don’t mess with entitlements,” but we know better. Like a bad dream, they’ll be back with more mischief and other attempts, and one way or another, they will have to do something now, we might hope, to fix some of the pieces of Obamacare that are broken.

Will they reach out to Democrats? Do they really have a choice?

Maybe this will be a twist on the old story, that if you break it, you own it. In this case, the message to the Senate might be, if you can’t break it, then do your job, and fix it.