Playbook: “President Trump has said he is done with health-care reform, and is moving onto an overhaul of the tax code. But behind the scenes, top White House officials are still calling Republicans, looking for a deal on a health-care overhaul. The bill went down in flames a few weeks ago, but the thinking is that the White House can’t just give up and walk away from their central campaign promise to repeal Obamacare. The effort has left Hill Republicans scratching their heads.”

“A sharp Republican makes this observation: The White House is not so good at internal congressional dynamics. OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, VP Mike Pence and HHS Secretary Tom Price — the leaders of the health-care reform effort — are all former lawmakers, but they all lost internal party elections when they were in Congress. They haven’t proven terribly adept at counting votes.”

“Let’s start over in a bipartisan way… We should have worked with Democrats from the very beginning. At the end of the day, you cannot pass legislation … that affects so many people and not have it be bipartisan.”

— Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), quoted by MLive, on the failed GOP effort to repeal Obamacare.

“The conservative Club for Growth said Monday that it is targeting 10 moderate House Republicans with a $1 million ad campaign, offering a glimpse into the right’s strategy for pushing through a GOP health-care overhaul,” the Washington Post reports.

“The ads, set to begin Tuesday, come at the beginning of a two-week congressional recess — and after the latest bid to reconcile warring GOP lawmakers and resurrect the American Health Care Act fell short last week.”

“But the Club for Growth sees a path to the bill’s passage: convincing more moderate — or less stridently conservative — Republicans to swallow a proposal favored by the House Freedom Caucus that would allow states to seek waivers of several Affordable Care Act insurance mandates.”