Good Wednesday morning. I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing, sponsored by Morgan Stanley.

And I'm Anna Palmer. Republicans have a big mess on their hands. Here's where things stand.

President Donald Trump went all in for Senator Luther Strange, following Mitch McConnell's lead and was thoroughly embarrassed.

Strange lost striking leader more, a man many senators are on the record

saying he is not even fit to serve in Washington. For his part, Roy Moore ran a campaign against

Mitch McConnell. So now the Kentucky Republican is working with a functional majority of 51 lawmakers,

which makes passing any big legislation that much harder. Two defections now sink

anything. If Democrats play their cards right, they can tie more, a GOP firebrand, to other Republican

candidates for federal office. With the failure of Graham Cassidy, Republicans do not have a single

major legislative victory in October of 2017.

They are now counting on rewriting the tax code to carry them into 2018 an election year,

but the tax blueprint, which will be unveiled today, is going to be very tough to get through a Republican Congress.

There are many reasons why. A, there are no details yet, so 292 lawmakers will now have a say. Thousands of lobbyists are going to be

working Capitol Hill to try to influence the process. That gets messy and that becomes a long,

long slog. There's plenty of things Republicans won't like in this blueprint, such as eliminating

the deduction for state and local taxes.

Another tough thing to swallow for Republicans, Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican, is retiring.

The two-term senator would have likely faced a primary opponent from the right.

He could be just the first Senate Republican looking for the exits.

Here's the headlines Mitch McConnell is reading.

John Bresnahan, Burgess Everett, and Josh Dossy detail McConnell's dreadful day,

writing that it is about as bad as it could get for the Kentucky Republican as some have started calling him weak.

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