Republicans’ embarrassing Obamacare overreach backfires

The GOP's new lie is designed to attack Obamacare and retroactively reassign blame for the shutdown. It won't work.

By Brian Beutler, Salon.com

Beyond a basic misunderstanding of the Democrats’ position in the shutdown and debt limit fights, one of the biggest reasons Republicans got themselves into so much trouble last month is that they badly misjudged both the party’s commitment to the Affordable Care Act and its level of concern that the law is a real political liability.

Any day, they believed, the coalition would crumble under the weight of news headlines, badly spun public opinion polls or deadline-driven legislative pressure, and Democrats would agree to undermine the law in some crucial way.

But they were wrong. Just three and a half weeks ago, the GOP shut down the government in part because Democrats refused to delay the healthcare law’s individual mandate as a ransom for passing a bipartisan appropriations measure.

In the interim, a few things have happened. First, Healthcare.gov launched. Second, it became clear that Healthcare.gov had some real problems (remember, the mandate demand predated the launch of the exchanges — the pitch was all about parity between businesses and individuals). Third, the government reopened.

(More here.)