A reader emails with an interesting theory:

Plenty of pundits (presumably non-ELB readers) have recently puzzled aloud about the title that Majority Leader McConnell gave to the Senate substitute to the American Health Care Act (“weirdly named,” said Ryan Grim). Some suggested that the cockroach-level polling of the AHCA led to a need to re-brand, which makes perfect sense but gets us only halfway. Others have suggested that “Reconciliation” was included to influence the parliamentarian to permit a simple majority vote even if negotiations lead the budget savings to vanish or get too close for comfort. A likely stretch, in my view, but one that still gets us only another quarter of the way to “Better Care Reconciliation Act.” I have a strong hunch that the Better Care Reconciliation Act was not close to the top performer in polling or focus groups. And I have another hunch that you know where I’m going with this:

McConnell chose Better Care Reconciliation Act to symbolically bury the piece of legislation he hates most of all from his many decades of public service, which he litigated up through the Supreme Court in his own name, a bill most know as McCain-Feingold but one the drafters and courts and McConnell knew as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Already, a Google search for “BCRA” pushes McCain-Feingold to the fourth page (other than the Wikipedia disambiguation page), which was not true just two weeks ago (as you can confirm by searching BCRA with a date range before 6/14/2017, when it was the top hit).

There has been some talk of McConnell’s “winning by losing” if failing to repeal the ACA paves the way to accomplish tax reform. But McConnell has already won a minor symbolic but assuredly sweet personal victory over his great nemesis. Add search engine optimization to his suite of formidable skills.