The GOP’s kamikaze mission to stop Obamacare
By Ezra Klein, WashPost, Updated: August 2, 2013
The campaign against Obamacare began as a campaign for self-interest. Obamacare, conservatives promised, would raise your taxes, take away your doctor and possibly put you in front of a death panel. The fight to keep it from passing was a fight to keep bad things from happening.
But the effort has devolved into something much weirder: A campaign of self-sacrifice. The current crop of Republican strategies ask conservative congressmen to hurt their constituents and their political prospects, conservative governors to hurt their states, and conservative activists to hurt themselves. It’s a kamikaze mission to stop Obamacare.
Take Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio’s effort to shut down the federal government unless the Obama administration agrees to defund its signature piece of legislation. If they managed to gather enough support to make good on the threat, the result would be a painful government shutdown that the public would — rightly — blame entirely on the Republican Party. They would’ve hurt their constituents and their chances of retaking the Senate majority in 2014.
“If I thought this would work, I would support it,” writes my colleague Charles Krauthammer. “But I don’t fancy suicide. It has a tendency to be fatal.”
In the states, Republican governors are saying no to billions of dollars in Medicaid money (and, in a number of cases where they said “yes,” their even-more conservative legislatures have said “no” on their behalf). That cuts them off from much-needed funds and cuts their poorest constituents off from free heath insurance. Moreover, it means their safety-net hospitals lose money they were relying on to survive — forcing devastating cuts to care. The result is a poorer state, worse-off residents and a health system under terrible financial stress. But at least they’ve taken a stand against Obamacare!
(More here.)
The campaign against Obamacare began as a campaign for self-interest. Obamacare, conservatives promised, would raise your taxes, take away your doctor and possibly put you in front of a death panel. The fight to keep it from passing was a fight to keep bad things from happening.
But the effort has devolved into something much weirder: A campaign of self-sacrifice. The current crop of Republican strategies ask conservative congressmen to hurt their constituents and their political prospects, conservative governors to hurt their states, and conservative activists to hurt themselves. It’s a kamikaze mission to stop Obamacare.
Take Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio’s effort to shut down the federal government unless the Obama administration agrees to defund its signature piece of legislation. If they managed to gather enough support to make good on the threat, the result would be a painful government shutdown that the public would — rightly — blame entirely on the Republican Party. They would’ve hurt their constituents and their chances of retaking the Senate majority in 2014.
“If I thought this would work, I would support it,” writes my colleague Charles Krauthammer. “But I don’t fancy suicide. It has a tendency to be fatal.”
In the states, Republican governors are saying no to billions of dollars in Medicaid money (and, in a number of cases where they said “yes,” their even-more conservative legislatures have said “no” on their behalf). That cuts them off from much-needed funds and cuts their poorest constituents off from free heath insurance. Moreover, it means their safety-net hospitals lose money they were relying on to survive — forcing devastating cuts to care. The result is a poorer state, worse-off residents and a health system under terrible financial stress. But at least they’ve taken a stand against Obamacare!
(More here.)
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