Republicans may have won the battle over the government shutdown after a handful of Democrats and one independent caved because they thought they couldn’t outlast Donald Trump, but they now face losing the war over the Affordable Care Act.

That is the opinion of GOP political strategist Susen Del Percio, who told an MSNBC host that the Republican Party is now trapped by its promise to hold a vote on the ACA, also known as Obamacare, which has the potential to be a loser for them no matter how the vote turns out.

Speaking with host Anna Cabrera, Del Percio said she was surprised that the eight lawmakers rolled over, but that she also thinks the GOP didn’t get a win they can cash in on — and they know it.

“Susan, what about Republicans?” the MSNBC host prompted her guest. “I mean, what did they get out of all of this? Do they have anything, any win to really point to?”

“They don't have a win,” Del Percio shot back. “And the Democrats — it just surprises me that they couldn't take the win, the win last week that they had at the election box.”

“Like that was big and they could have owned it,” she added. “They could have done the shutdown even towards the end of last week and said, ‘Win, win, win, and we're forcing the Republicans to take a vote on health care subsidies — that is huge.”

“And that's what the Republicans have been afraid of all along, is this vote,” she elaborated. “They're going to have to take in the Senate by, I think, the second week of December. Will they support those subsidies to the Affordable Healthcare Act from expiring at the end of December? That's going to put them in a box.”

“So if they if they vote yes, then the Democrats [can] say ‘We won, we pushed it, we got it.’ And if they vote no, they have a great election issue come 2026. So I think that the Republicans are more or less scratching their heads, saying, ‘Why aren't the Democrats, why are they not taking this as a big win?’ And it's just more reflective of the intra-party fighting in the Democratic Party,” she concluded.

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