Thats right, the GOP has failed at the thing they ran on for the last 4 elections. They failed at the one and only consistent promise they made in election after election after election. They failed at something they managed to do successfully, only to find it vetoed when Obama was president.
How did this happen?
Its simple......it was never supposed to work. This entire quest was never EVER supposed to be about repealing and replacing healthcare coverage for millions of Americans. No this entire thing was about repealing and replacing the greatest political mistake made in the last century....Obamacare.
Confused? let me explain. The current american healthcare system ISNT Obamacare. its actually officially named the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, and would likely be offically known as "Affordable Care" "Affordcare" or just straight up "Healthcare" if it wasnt for the Republicans creating and getting the public to use the name "Obamacare"
And thats a problem for 2 reasons
1) At its heart Obamacare is actually a Republican idea. Its based on "RomneyCare" in Massachusetts which itself was based on the Republican healthcare plan put forth by Republicans during the Clinton Administration to oppose HillaryCare, and was spawned inside the Heritage Foundation, one of the major groups behind the Tea Party movement.
In short, if think the current healthcare system is better than the one before the passing of the ACA, its the GOP who should get a lot of the credit....but they dont because they named it "Obamacare" and then lied about their participation (for example the imfamous part of the bill that was slandered and intentionally misinterpreted to lie about death panels was written by a Republican), so no one realizes they should get some credit.
2) Speaking of credit....which president passed Medicare into law? Medicaid? Social Security? I dont really think that many people know...especially among those who were born after the programs were implemented.
Its going to be much much easier in the future for people to remember which president passed "Obamacare" because its named after the guy. And generally speaking Americans think highly of presidents that they can associate with positive things IE FDR and the "new deal" Lincoln and the Civil War, Reagan and the Berlin Wall collapse, Jefferson and the Constitution, Wilson and winning World War 1
Now this is true even when the presidents record has some major problems. As example: FDR made it harder for Jews to come here when the Holocaust started, Lincoln believed blacks were inherently inferior to whites and would have kept slavery to stop the civil war in a heartbeat, Reagan sold weapons to terrorists and paid to train what became Al-Qadea, Jefferson owned slaves, one of which hes famous for repeatedly raping from the time she was like 15, and Wilson was a raging racist who re-segregated the federal government, and loved the Pro KKK birth of a nation film.
My point is, if Obamacare is seen as good, and its associated with Obama, in the minds of all future Americans, well Obama was an amazing president, no matter the rest of his record. Which is kinda a bad thing if your entire purpose as a party was "We hate that guy".
Now to be fair (sort of) to Republicans, the name "Obamacare" predates the passage of the ACA....they named it that during the legislation stage because the reverse is also true, a president who is associated with a bad thing is seen as a disaster in the future no matter their record.
So they created the Obamacare name because they were hoping the ACA would fail (this is why none of the them voted for it) and then presumably they could come in a few years later after winning an election and pass their own version of a healthcare bill likely more or less identical to the ACA.
Granted the cynicism of that strategy.....that people will basically hate this idea that we actually secretly like, so we get the credit later for passing it and can use it to forever ruin the other guys reputation, is one of the major reasons the GOP wound up in this mess.
If you think some republicans would realize the inherent cynicism there, and start prepping to move before anyone else noticed, youd be right.
The biggest break the GOP caught was that the ACA's implementation was going to be delayed several years. If they made up things, like say death panels, to turn people against the law before it actually happened...and therefore could repeal it and eventually present their own plan.
Dont believe me that republicans realized literally from day one how badly they miscalulated and immediately tried to get out of the hole they dig themselves into?
The ACA was signed into law on March 23th 2010. That same day, Senator Jim DeMitt (who would leave congress to go run the heritage foundation, the group that created what eventually became the ACA in the first place) and Rep's Michelle Bachmann and Steve King introduced bills into congress to repeal the ACA. 14 Republican State Attorney Generals also filed suit that same day.
Keep in mind as this point the ink wasnt even dry on this thing. So yea, the GOP realized pretty fast how badly they fucked that up.
And by this point they had already set the ground work for the identical replacement idea, with then Minority Whip Eric Cantor saying in an interview published in January of 2010 that if the ACA passed Republicans would want to repeal alot of it...but not all of it, since it had some good parts and the GOP would NOT campaign for full repeal. For the record, Cantors comments would be echoed by other republicans (including Senators Corker and Burr) in the up coming months.
But then the Tea Party happened....and everything started to go to shit. The Tea Party which was born a libertarian movement go co-oped by FOX news and the republican right wing fringe, and they HATED Obama and Government so they damn sure hated a government program created by Obama and they wanted it out instantly. Steve King, an early adherent to the Tea Party spoke out against Cantor's faction saying “if we leave any component of it in there, it has, it’s just become a malignant tumor that’s attacking our liberty and our freedom and it’s diminishing our aspirations and it saps our overall productivity as a nation,”
Trying to reach a compromise between these two sides is what lead to the idea of "repeal and replace" in may of 2010.
Basically they could repeal the ACA, and then pass another more or less identical bill instead and claim they saved us from Obama and they fixed the healthcare system.
The first attempt at this was in May 2010 with a 9 page bill.....that like all future GOP plans until about 2017, looked pretty much like a lose framework of the ACA. Hell they took the idea of "pass something that looks basically like the ACA" so far that in 2012 the ran Mitt Romney, the guy who successfully implemented the first real version of the ACA as their candidate because his healthcare program was better than the ACA.
This weird dichotomy of we hate it/we love it would continue though 2010, Republicans like then Tea Party backed Senate Candidate Marco Rubio would sign a pledge to repeal ALL of the ACA, and also to keep the preexisting condition coverage and keeping kids on parents insurance until 26 parts of the bill.
Now in fairness to the Republicans, they did pretty well in 2010. As the ACA wasnt anything more than a piece of paper at the time, they could and did freely demonize the bill without that many people noticing they wanted to keep so much of it it couldnt possibly be as bad as they said.
Fast Forward to 2011 where the newly GOP controlled House would pass the first of 50 different bills to repeal the ACA...and in every single case by a much much much large margin than the attempt that eventually passed in 2017.
Notice of course I say "repeal" the ACA, not "repeal and replace". While the GOP did have the occasionally replacement plan (most of which got instantly shelved the minute the media noticed it was pretty much the ACA under a different name), they didnt really need to vote on those. See all the experienced politicians knew all the votes they took were never going to become law, and therefore never actually had to worry about any impact from them.
The mistake the Republicans made here, which bit them in the ass 6 years later, is that it seems many of the newly elected Republicans didnt get that part. They didnt seem to realize the votes to repeal the ACA were totally for show and were done specifically because they wouldnt pass and it would allow the GOP to play off the anger they had made up with their supporters to win the next few elections.
Now I know what your thinking, what I'm saying sound good/sounds like a steaming pile of shit (depending on your inherit bias coming up) and either way all I've shown you is like my opinion man.
So you want some support for what I'm saying....fair enough.
Quoting an interview from the Washingtonian from last week with former Majority Leader Eric Cantor (who was Majority leader during much of the Repeal/Replace push)
"Asked if he feels partly responsible for [Republicans] current predicament, Cantor is unequivocal. “Oh,” he says, “100 percent.”
He goes further: “To give the impression that if Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, that we could do that when Obama was still in office . . . .” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. “I never believed it.”
He says he wasn’t the only one aware of the charade: “We sort of all got what was going on, that there was this disconnect in terms of communication, because no one wanted to take the time out in the general public to even think about ‘Wait a minute—that can’t happen.’ ” But, he adds, “if you’ve got that anger working for you, you’re gonna let it be.”
It’s a stunning admission from a former member of the party leadership—that the linchpin of GOP electoral strategy for the better part of a decade was a fantasy, a flame continually fanned solely because, when it came to midterm elections, it worked. (Barring, of course, his own.)"
There you have it folks....the guy responsible for all the Repeal votes saying even he didnt believe they could actually do this and only did it to capitalize off angry voters for electoral success.
In fact, as early as 2012, it should have become clear to the GOP they were in deep deep trouble as far as people/new members of congress actually having drunk enough of the repeal/replace kool-aid to no longer realize what the real goal was.
Coming into the 2012 election then Senate Minority Leader McConnell said he didnt really want to vote on repeal again...at least not until after the election maybe. McConnell was forced to change his mind after several conservative groups threatened to throw a shit ton of money into having him removed from office in his reelection...if they couldnt force him to resign first. For what its worth, in his reelection campaign in 2014, McConnell was forced into the position of running against the ACA and for its full repeal, while also promising not to repeal Kynect, the state exchange set up by Kentucky as part of the ACA. Because as it turns out, now that its going into affect, people really like "Obamacare"....though republican demonization has successfully soured them on the name.
This of course creates a bigger problem for the GOP. Among the half who remember this is a scam to change the name and not much else, they have to start putting out alternatives even closer and keeping more of the ACA.....which the half of the party too damn stupid to realize the scam hate.
Keep in mind, in 2013, as the "WE LOVE OUR STATE HEALTHCARE/OBAMACARE SUCKS ASS" division was starting up, the half of the GOP not in on the scam shut down the government over the funding of Obamacare. They lost so badly in the bill to reopen the government they had to agree to accelerate parts of the ACA's implementation. So its not like they didnt have fair warning that even among people who hated Obamacare, they may not have hated it as much as congress thought, given again, they had to back down and reopen the government after everyone blamed them for all the other services they lost.
In fact, as early as 2012, it should have become clear to the GOP they were in deep deep trouble as far as people/new members of congress actually having drunk enough of the repeal/replace kool-aid to no longer realize what the real goal was.
Coming into the 2012 election then Senate Minority Leader McConnell said he didnt really want to vote on repeal again...at least not until after the election maybe. McConnell was forced to change his mind after several conservative groups threatened to throw a shit ton of money into having him removed from office in his reelection...if they couldnt force him to resign first. For what its worth, in his reelection campaign in 2014, McConnell was forced into the position of running against the ACA and for its full repeal, while also promising not to repeal Kynect, the state exchange set up by Kentucky as part of the ACA. Because as it turns out, now that its going into affect, people really like "Obamacare"....though republican demonization has successfully soured them on the name.
This of course creates a bigger problem for the GOP. Among the half who remember this is a scam to change the name and not much else, they have to start putting out alternatives even closer and keeping more of the ACA.....which the half of the party too damn stupid to realize the scam hate.
Keep in mind, in 2013, as the "WE LOVE OUR STATE HEALTHCARE/OBAMACARE SUCKS ASS" division was starting up, the half of the GOP not in on the scam shut down the government over the funding of Obamacare. They lost so badly in the bill to reopen the government they had to agree to accelerate parts of the ACA's implementation. So its not like they didnt have fair warning that even among people who hated Obamacare, they may not have hated it as much as congress thought, given again, they had to back down and reopen the government after everyone blamed them for all the other services they lost.
Now given that the ACA didnt even start to go into affect until 2012, and not full effect until 2014, you can see how fast the public turned around on the idea....within a year the GOP was already being forced to defend it and just obscure what they were defending. Hell by 2015 the GOP was writing legislation to save the ACA from earlier actions taken by the GOP. In fact by that point they'd basically given up on the repeal idea all together, and instead the idea had been to tweak the ACA and take credit for the tweaks to claim it was a new program. Even Candidate Donald Trump had been onboard with the scam as a candidate....his website claimed he had 10 different proposals to repeal Obamacare...of course you dont need 10 proposals to repeal the ACA, that only takes 1. You need 10, if and only if, the plan is to tweak the ACA and then claim its a different program.
And given they never wanted to repeal the program at all, and enough republicans are around who remember this is a scam, its not surprising they cant seem to get it done now in 2017, even though they were very unexpectedly handed the chance thanks to Trumps surprise victory in the 2016 elections.
And thats something else to remember too.....the GOP never expected to win the white house in 2016. If youve been reading my blog for a while, especially in 2015 and 2016 I pointed out repeatedly the number of times were saying things suggesting they had already given up the 2016 election and preparing to battle with President Hillary Clinton to get her out of office in 2020. This likely would have given them a better exit strategy....they would have had 4-8 more years to slowly wind down the assault on the ACA (recognizing that it was here to stay) and move on from what would have been a decade+ long war to something else without it being as obvious.
But then Trump won....and shit looks like they are going to have to carry through on this campaign promise they didnt really want to do anyways. And since they never wanted to do it, theyd never given any actual though to it.....hence why the GOP was so so fractured over what exactly to replace Obamacare with.
Its why they failed on the first attempt in the House.....in 7 years theyd never needed to plan that part out. Yet they had promised their voters it was a thing they would do on day 1. So they were never able to plan anything out. Yes they got something out of the House, but it was already known when that happened it would never pass the senate.
And the senate, its worth noting, has a much slower turn over rate due to those longer terms, so the senate also has a higher concentration of Republicans who are senior enough to remember the entire replace idea was a scam.
Which is why after 4 months of work and multiple attempts that all got pissed down the tube and the final repeal bill (Skinny repeal) went down in defeat. But not without making Obamacare the most popular its ever been as people realized all the benefits it gave them that the GOP wanted to take away.
Now of course publicly, John McCain is getting all the credit....and some people are trying to argue Collins and Murkowski should get some too as they were consistent no votes.
But trust me when I tell you, they are far far far from the only people in the senate who actually oppose the bill. Remember up until a few hours before the final vote, something like 10-12 republicans, including McCain were on the fence.
Of course we found out later McCain had made up his mind before.....early enough to tell Democratic Senate Minority Leader Schumer which way he voting. In fact Schumer and former VP Biden had been reaching out to McCain for days, an its highly unlikely he was the only one they reached out too. The big shock is that apparently none of this was known to Mitch McConnell at a minimum.
And given they never wanted to repeal the program at all, and enough republicans are around who remember this is a scam, its not surprising they cant seem to get it done now in 2017, even though they were very unexpectedly handed the chance thanks to Trumps surprise victory in the 2016 elections.
And thats something else to remember too.....the GOP never expected to win the white house in 2016. If youve been reading my blog for a while, especially in 2015 and 2016 I pointed out repeatedly the number of times were saying things suggesting they had already given up the 2016 election and preparing to battle with President Hillary Clinton to get her out of office in 2020. This likely would have given them a better exit strategy....they would have had 4-8 more years to slowly wind down the assault on the ACA (recognizing that it was here to stay) and move on from what would have been a decade+ long war to something else without it being as obvious.
But then Trump won....and shit looks like they are going to have to carry through on this campaign promise they didnt really want to do anyways. And since they never wanted to do it, theyd never given any actual though to it.....hence why the GOP was so so fractured over what exactly to replace Obamacare with.
Its why they failed on the first attempt in the House.....in 7 years theyd never needed to plan that part out. Yet they had promised their voters it was a thing they would do on day 1. So they were never able to plan anything out. Yes they got something out of the House, but it was already known when that happened it would never pass the senate.
And the senate, its worth noting, has a much slower turn over rate due to those longer terms, so the senate also has a higher concentration of Republicans who are senior enough to remember the entire replace idea was a scam.
Which is why after 4 months of work and multiple attempts that all got pissed down the tube and the final repeal bill (Skinny repeal) went down in defeat. But not without making Obamacare the most popular its ever been as people realized all the benefits it gave them that the GOP wanted to take away.
Now of course publicly, John McCain is getting all the credit....and some people are trying to argue Collins and Murkowski should get some too as they were consistent no votes.
But trust me when I tell you, they are far far far from the only people in the senate who actually oppose the bill. Remember up until a few hours before the final vote, something like 10-12 republicans, including McCain were on the fence.
Of course we found out later McCain had made up his mind before.....early enough to tell Democratic Senate Minority Leader Schumer which way he voting. In fact Schumer and former VP Biden had been reaching out to McCain for days, an its highly unlikely he was the only one they reached out too. The big shock is that apparently none of this was known to Mitch McConnell at a minimum.
So why did McCain play the part of undecided in the run up to the vote? political cover for his colleagues
Many republican senators found themselves in a tight spot on the last vote....the bill was so precision focused it went only for the mandates the GOP had raised the most hell about for years. So for most of them there was no good excuse not to vote for it.
Murkowski and Collins had an excuse....the same one they had always had, they come from the states most likely to be crushed by the effects of repeal that they are safe if not even helped (in collins case) by voting against the bill.
Other senators didnt have that luxury....their voters had drunk so much of the GOP bullshit kool-aid, they couldnt not vote for the bill without losing their seats. At the same time, they couldnt possibly allow the bill to pass and not risk losing their seats when their voters realized exactly how much bullshit they had been tricked into swallowing when repeal went into effect.
And the precision focus of the bill meant people like Shelly Moore Capito, Lindsey Graham and Dean Heller (among others) who had managed to create excuses for previous no votes on technicalities and issues with the bills, had by doing so created a situation where they had to vote for this as it had none of those problems. If they didnt, theyd be voted in in primaries.
Now to be clear, I'm not excusing their votes. The fact they voted for the "skinny repeal" bill even though they all thought and said it would be a disaster if it became law is definitely something they should be held to account for, and likely should all lose their seats, and they are just praying you forget about it in 1,3 or 5, years when they are up for reelection. Im just explaining why they bothered with the maneuver at all.
So how does McCain factor into this?
Simple: He's not running in another election ever again.
Now he hasnt publicly said as much yet, and no one else will either because its incredibly brash, rude
Now to be clear, I'm not excusing their votes. The fact they voted for the "skinny repeal" bill even though they all thought and said it would be a disaster if it became law is definitely something they should be held to account for, and likely should all lose their seats, and they are just praying you forget about it in 1,3 or 5, years when they are up for reelection. Im just explaining why they bothered with the maneuver at all.
So how does McCain factor into this?
Simple: He's not running in another election ever again.
Now he hasnt publicly said as much yet, and no one else will either because its incredibly brash, rude
and morbid as can be to bring it up, but the fact of the matter is, John McCain's form of brain cancer has a 4% survival rate over 5 years for people in their 40's and 50's. The older you are from that, the lesser the chance of survival. And McCain is about to turn 81.
Now I dont wish death on ANYONE, so I personally hope John McCain is alive and well in 2022 when he would be up for reelection, but the only way he even has a chance is to devote all of his time and effort to beating cancer. And he cant do that and be a senator at the same time. Now he may choose to try (id be surprised) but he has to know even if he does he wont be able be an absentee senator and win in 2022.
So in essence John McCain is immune to any political fallout or consequences from the Right wing over his vote. There is nothing they can do to him.
Furthermore to be honest, they cant even really attack him that much.......because if they try to they public is going to think they look like dicks for attacking a guy with brain cancer. So they basically have to let the matter drop. (this by the way is also why Murkowski and Collins arnt exactly rushing for their share of the credit)
Which is perfect for the Republican party as a whole...if you cant talk about the repeal bills failure, you cant really talk about repeal. Which gets them out of the circular firing squad they found themselves in, where not repealing Obamacare would get them killed in primaries from the right, and repealing obamacare would get them killed in the general election
Admittedly some major damage was already done. The GOP has already started workings with democrats to find ways to improve the hated "Obamacare"...and the Democrats took the lead on that the minute the last repeal bill went down. So the democrats are likely to get at least half the credit for any improvements to the thing they already get the credit for creating. The GOP therefore gets left with the scraps on the credit....but they will take it as it will help to convinced the voters who turned on them over their repeal crusade, that they actually dont just want to harm or kill them to give the rich a tax cut. It wont be enough, many of them are going to lose their seats in the next election...but at least they have an a route to rebuilding....not to mention changing the subject
Plus as another hit they are going to take, thanks to the "word association" of Obamacare Barack Obama will be seen by the people of the future as a great president...meaning the republicans completely failed at their objective. But I think the GOP decided they would rather live with that than live with the backlash of what would have happened if they had passed the skinny repeal bill and got left holding the bag.
Or at least that was the plan. It appears Donald Trump, desperate to do something ANYTHING at all on any issue at all, forgot the whole thing was a scam (despite being in on it before), and sent his team out on TV today to basically demand the Senate keep fighting and losing on this issue. Office of Budget and Management Director Mulvaney says its official white house policy the senate keeps working to repeal Obamacare. President Trump believes if the senate doesnt keep fighting this dead issue they are all quiters and Kellyanne Conway is promising that Donald Trump will decide if hes going to implode Obamacare this week.....presumably with the intention of forcing the senate to do this again.
So at the end of the day, it appears John McCain may have been too little too late. He tried to reverse the biggest political mistake of recent memory, and get the GOP out of this mess....but the presidents a kool aid drinker and now the GOP may wind up shooting themselves in the face a few more times as their party continues to crumble and look incompetence and unable to govern over the miscalculation of being against "Obamacare" but for most of their own idea, the ACA and the fallout from it, and lying to their voters about it.
Now I dont wish death on ANYONE, so I personally hope John McCain is alive and well in 2022 when he would be up for reelection, but the only way he even has a chance is to devote all of his time and effort to beating cancer. And he cant do that and be a senator at the same time. Now he may choose to try (id be surprised) but he has to know even if he does he wont be able be an absentee senator and win in 2022.
So in essence John McCain is immune to any political fallout or consequences from the Right wing over his vote. There is nothing they can do to him.
Furthermore to be honest, they cant even really attack him that much.......because if they try to they public is going to think they look like dicks for attacking a guy with brain cancer. So they basically have to let the matter drop. (this by the way is also why Murkowski and Collins arnt exactly rushing for their share of the credit)
Which is perfect for the Republican party as a whole...if you cant talk about the repeal bills failure, you cant really talk about repeal. Which gets them out of the circular firing squad they found themselves in, where not repealing Obamacare would get them killed in primaries from the right, and repealing obamacare would get them killed in the general election
Admittedly some major damage was already done. The GOP has already started workings with democrats to find ways to improve the hated "Obamacare"...and the Democrats took the lead on that the minute the last repeal bill went down. So the democrats are likely to get at least half the credit for any improvements to the thing they already get the credit for creating. The GOP therefore gets left with the scraps on the credit....but they will take it as it will help to convinced the voters who turned on them over their repeal crusade, that they actually dont just want to harm or kill them to give the rich a tax cut. It wont be enough, many of them are going to lose their seats in the next election...but at least they have an a route to rebuilding....not to mention changing the subject
Plus as another hit they are going to take, thanks to the "word association" of Obamacare Barack Obama will be seen by the people of the future as a great president...meaning the republicans completely failed at their objective. But I think the GOP decided they would rather live with that than live with the backlash of what would have happened if they had passed the skinny repeal bill and got left holding the bag.
Or at least that was the plan. It appears Donald Trump, desperate to do something ANYTHING at all on any issue at all, forgot the whole thing was a scam (despite being in on it before), and sent his team out on TV today to basically demand the Senate keep fighting and losing on this issue. Office of Budget and Management Director Mulvaney says its official white house policy the senate keeps working to repeal Obamacare. President Trump believes if the senate doesnt keep fighting this dead issue they are all quiters and Kellyanne Conway is promising that Donald Trump will decide if hes going to implode Obamacare this week.....presumably with the intention of forcing the senate to do this again.
So at the end of the day, it appears John McCain may have been too little too late. He tried to reverse the biggest political mistake of recent memory, and get the GOP out of this mess....but the presidents a kool aid drinker and now the GOP may wind up shooting themselves in the face a few more times as their party continues to crumble and look incompetence and unable to govern over the miscalculation of being against "Obamacare" but for most of their own idea, the ACA and the fallout from it, and lying to their voters about it.
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