“Deja Vu, All Over Again”: Every Day Is Groundhog Day For The GOP’s Obamacare Replacement
In a moment of irony not lost on observers, the GOP-led House Rules Committee will spend Groundhog Day considering the 114th Congress’s first destined-to-be-vetoed attempt to repeal Obamacare. Adding to the déjà vu is the fact that, despite promises to replace the health care law, Republicans still don’t have a firm plan.
The latest repeal bill, sponsored by Rep. Bradley Byrne, an Alabama Republican, doesn’t propose a replacement, but mandates that relevant committees “report to the House of Representatives legislation proposing changes to existing law.” Those proposals, in the language of the bill, should meet 12 provisions, all of which either rehash generic Republican priorities (“foster economic growth and private sector job creation by eliminating job-killing policies and regulations”) or repeat old conservative health care proposals, like medical liability reform.
Further to Byrne’s bill, Reps. Paul Ryan, Fred Upton, and John Kline are expected to lead a task force to create an alternative. “House Republicans’ most serious attempt thus far to develop their health care reform package,” Politico reported Friday.
Early last year, Republicans devoted considerable time to hyping up possible replacements. There was the proposal from Senators Tom Coburn and Orrin Hatch last January; then a March measure from the House Republicans, which The Washington Post described as a “conservative approach to fixing the nation’s health-care system”; and, a few weeks later, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Bobbycare.
And then in April 2014, Rep. Ryan released a budget for 2015 that repealed the law without endorsing any kind of replacement. When asked about his party’s plans, Ryan told The Washington Examiner that “we have lots of ideas of how to offer patient-centered health care… So you’ll see a lot of different comprehensive Republican alternative plans.”
Those alternatives never really solidified. The problem in 2014 was that Republicans couldn’t agree on one, or even on whether it was politically worthwhile to push an alternative that might distract from the Democrats’ Obamacare woes. The problem now is that the Supreme Court might completely gut the health care law in June by ruling that the three dozen states issuing Obamacare subsidies through federal exchanges are acting unlawfully.
Republicans have said that they want to be ready when the court decides—but they don’t seem to have a plan for that scenario. Then again, the Obama administration might not have a plan themselves.
By: Arit John, Bloomberg Politics, January 31, 2015
“Group Polarization Intensifies”: Only Hearing Praise Back Home, It’s Too Soon To Write Off The Tea Party
Don’t write the tea party’s obituary just yet. Despite historic victories over tea party extremism in Tuesday’s elections, we haven’t seen the last of tea partiers.
First, the good news. Effectiveness triumphed over extremism on Tuesday. Voters in New Jersey and Virginia elected governors who appeal to the great bipartisan middle by moving beyond partisanship to “get things done” for the people. In Virginia, even Republican leaders endorsed Democrat Terry McAuliffe because he demonstrated cooperation across the aisle, including helping to secure Democratic votes for a bipartisan state transportation bill. McAuliffe’s success in presenting himself as non-partisan is notable given that he once served as national chair of the Democratic party and recently flaunted his poor rating from the NRA.
Extremism lost out. In contrast to McAuliffe, Ken Cuccinelli focused on a divisive social agenda that was too extreme for purple state Virginia, where a full third of the voters are independents. He inflamed Latino opposition with comments that compared immigration policy to rodent extermination, and offended women by introducing legislation to make divorce more difficult and to confer “personhood” on fetuses, which experts say would have outlawed common forms of birth control, including the pill.
Cuccinelli also alienated purple state voters by pursuing an extremist social agenda as attorney general (leading the legal fight against the Affordable Care Act, investigating climate scientists, aggressively implementing anti-abortion regulations and pursuing sodomy laws). More than half of Virginia voters called Cuccinelli “too conservative” on most issues, while finding McAuliffe “just about right,” in a Washington Post poll. (Cuccinelli’s social agenda blinders prevent him from recognizing that his opposition to Obamacare didn’t help him narrow the vote gap in the days leading up to the election. His tea party allies are similarly blinded, as evidenced by our election night debate on The Kudlow Report; they remain enamored of their social agenda and don’t recognize it is divisive.)
The final straw may have been when tea party leader Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas came to Virginia to campaign for Cuccinelli. Cruz, the architect of the federal government shutdown, only served to remind Virginians of Cuccinelli’s adoration for the shutdown politics the tea party pursues – particularly damaging given how many Virginians’ livelihoods are tied to the federal government (32 percent of Virginian voters reported that their households were affected by the shutdown). Nevertheless, one cannot chalk up the Virginia results to the shutdown, since McAuliffe’s lead in the polls over Cuccinelli dates back to July, before the shutdown.
Like McAuliffe, New Jersey incumbent Republican Governor Chris Christie credibly made the case to voters that he is an effective, bipartisan leader. Christie won praise from blue state voters for his willingness to collaborate with President Obama on the cleanup after Hurricane Sandy and on an expansion of state Medicaid through Obamacare. Sure, he’s conservative (anti-choice, anti-gay marriage, anti-labor), but Christie appealed to voters as someone willing to set aside partisanship to get results – proving that a Republican can win a blue state if he prioritizes effectiveness across party lines and plays down his social agenda.
A third victory for the middle came in a special primary for an Alabama House seat, where the Republican establishment called in heavy guns and large corporate dollars to ensure mainstream Republican Bradley Byrne beat tea party radical Dean Young – proving that even conservative House districts can reject tea partiers, so long as the Republican establishment fights hard enough.
And in New York City, a populist liberal – Bill de Blasio – was heartily elected over his business-minded Republican opponent, although the real race, in this blue city, occurred during the Democratic primary.
Combine Tuesday’s losses with news of a Republican PAC to combat tea party primary candidates and national polls showing diminishing support for the tea party, and you might well think the tea party is facing a death knell. Especially when you add in the prediction by demographic pollsters that the tea party will eventually die out with the aging of its largely older supporters.
But, before you write that obituary, remember that many House Republicans who championed the government shutdown are hearing only praise back home. Given gerrymandering in 2010, most House Republicans now represent ideologically conservative districts. Only 17 Republicans represent districts that voted for President Obama in 2012. As social scientists have pointed out, group polarization only intensifies as group members reinforce each other’s views and hear fewer alternative views. And if they “live” in a conservative news bubble, then, as conservative journalist Robert Costa put it, “the conservative strategy of the moment, no matter how unrealistic it might be, catches fire.”
These House conservatives aren’t going anywhere, and they may well launch another shutdown and threaten debt default this winter. Nevertheless, Tuesday reminds us that extremism can be a liability on election day.
By: Carrie Wofford, U. S. News and World Report, November 7, 2013
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