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In the clubby world of the Senate, relationships could determine the fate of ObamaCare repeal. The bill’s main sponsors — Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) — are laboring to sell their Republican colleagues on the legislation, which would turn much of ObamaCare’s funding into block grants to the states. With Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pledging to vote against the bill, Graham and Cassidy need to win over at least two of the three Republicans who voted in July against the last repeal bill: Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Susan Collins (Maine).  (Hellmann, 9/18)

“I always do whatever Lindsey Graham tells me to do,” Senator John McCain, the unpredictable Arizona Republican, said last week, while entertaining questions from a scrum of reporters in a Capitol hallway. He was referring to his best Senate friend and frequent travel partner, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who is so closely identified with Mr. McCain that when he arrived in the Senate after serving in the House, he was called “McCain’s mini-me.”But now the McCain-Graham bond is being tested. (Stolberg, 9/19)

Now that he has endorsed it, the Kentucky Republican is invested in a proposal that, if successful, would exist primarily because of work outside his leadership team. “We kept working on it, so now we have this possibility,” [Sen. Ron] Johnson said Monday. (Williams, 9/18)

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, said everyone is aware this is the last shot. "We'd like to do something and something's better than nothing," Roberts said. By Monday, the momentum was growing. Behind the scenes, Cassidy and Graham were engaged in a full-court press, reaching out to colleagues and leadership and trying to get them to back their plan publicly. By Monday, House Speaker Paul Ryan was calling the plan the "best, last chance" the GOP has to overhaul Obamacare -- and the Senate's finance committee had announced a hearing on the proposal. (Fox and Mattingly, (9/19)