Leaders in the GOP-controlled House and Senate see the court challenge as their best hope for tearing apart a law they have long opposed. If the court strikes down the subsidies, Democrats are expected to clamor for lawmakers to pass a measure correcting the language in the law to revive them. Congressional Republicans say there is no possibility they would allow that.
Greg Sargent notes this could play out as overreach as 30 states aren't going to sit idly by and do nothing with taxpayers suddenly having unaffordable health care because the GOP Congress won't fix it.
It is for this reason that there is a hidden upside in a Supreme Court ruling with the challengers. It just might finally force Republicans to own the consequences of their actual current stance on health reform, which is that they favor blowing up Obamacare and replacing it with nothing. Republicans could very well just allow the disruptions to unfold in hopes that chaos is their political friend in the 2016 election. Alternatively, Republicans could enter into real negotiations to fix the law in exchange for changes they want. Or Republicans could finally coalesce behind an alternative that would purport to expand coverage to those who lost it and continue to go without it. Or maybe that alternative wouldn’t purport to do this. Either way, that alternative could be evaluated against what Obamacare had been doing in many states before SCOTUS gutted it. Then we could re-litigate all this in 2016.
I think Greg has it right with the first option: since when have voters over the last six years punished Republicans for causing chaos? Certainly not in 2010, and they were rewarded with Senate control in 2014 for doing just that.
So yes, Federal exchange states will burn, it'll become a crisis, and voters will blame Obama not for causing the problem, but for being unable to convince Republicans to fix it. If this keeps up for two years, the GOP may coast to an easy win. So what if millions of Americans lose their health care? Most voters will say "Well, the Supreme Court decided the Republicans were right all along" and will choose to punish Democrats.
And the GOP knows it.
Thanks a lot, Ralph, sure looks like there is more than a dime's worth of difference between the two parties at this juncture. Opinions may differ on the shape of the Earth, but right now I kind of miss those Blue Dogs who would have voted to put gavels into the hands of Pelosi and Reid even at the price of annoying defections on individual pieces of legislation.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, let's have a hearty "FUCK YOU!" to Michael Moore and his recent comments that the Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans for starting the Iraq War. Talk about your idiotic both-siderism, it doesn't just come from the lamestream press: if our celebrity film maker had not conspired with the Naderites to throw the election to Bush, President Gore would never have gone into overblown hysteria mode and thrown away our nation's men and money and prestige on that idiotic war. But take responsibility for his own actions, that you will never see from Michael Moore and his ilk.
Sounds like Attkisson is a looney as Wheeler and Greenwald and the rest of the Daily Kos hysteria brigade who were so convinced (and probably are, still to this day) that the NSA had cracked their laptops to watch them masturbate.
ReplyDeleteBut you are sadly correct in that the wingnut CT brigade turns out to vote for their own side while the gibbering idiot left takes great pride in sabotaging elections and deliberately throwing power to the other side. Those contradictions don't heighten themselves.
That " former Massachusetts governor" bit still chaps my hide. I remember the 2002 general elections as if they were yesterday: the gibbering idiot wing of the Democratic Party felt all butthurt that the primary did not go their way so they threw their votes away on perennial Green Party loser Jill Stein in order to prevent Democrat Shannon O'Brien from beating empty suit "Mitt" Romney.
ReplyDeleteFrom his lofty perch in the Governor's desk, Mitt vetoed everything in sight: especially the health care reform legislation which he did everything he could to disrupt and impede. Fortunately he could not do very much as the legislature featured veto proof supermajorities that were determined to make health care reform work.
Mitt then did what every sleazebag politician in history has done, slapping his name on the resulting program and claiming credit for the whole thing. He then skipped town to run for president on the resounding platform of "I am universally despised in the state where I used to be governor."
Which did not work out well for him, thank God and to the benefit of the whole world.
One last story. Mitt once signed an order forbidding gay people from out of state to come to Massachusetts just to get married. He then got in the limo and was driven to the Cape, where his son from Michigan and his soon to be daughter in law from Utah had just flown in for a quickie wedding before their honeymoon in Bermuda. The pious hypocrite generated quite a bit of resentment and ill will on that one.
Agree on all counts. When it comes to what ails our nation, I have to point to 2000, when Ralph, with the help of Mike and others, helped to put Bush in office. Of course, they've never owned up to it and have spent the past few years screwing up any chance to fix things with their ridiculous efforts at not voting and blaming only Democrats while giving the GOP more chances to screw things up even further.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, it makes me sick to my stomach. Do they want tnings to crash and burn in the foolish puritopian hope that Americans will vote for Warren or Sanders?
Puritopian, that's a good word.
ReplyDeleteFor all the squealing of the elwiors, the good Senator Warren is hardly the second coming of Lenin. She's from Oklahoma, for God's sake! I have family out there, and they are good people, but they ain't social democrats. Bernie Sanders is, of course, but then he gets dragged down by all those weirdo special interest groups and the dark undercurrents of incest and madness that swirl around the Green Mountains. People out west in Ohio think that Vermont is all lattes and Volvos, but a lot of unpleasantness gets locked away in the basement away from prying eyes. How do people think Kerry was able to kneecap Howard Dean so easily in 2003?
As an aside, some polls have been done at the Daily Kos and it turns out that about 85% of the regulars are not only atheists but openly contemptuous of their allies who happen to be christians. This one fact goes a long way to explain why they are perpetually out of touch with the main currents of Democratic thought, and chronically impotent in their efforts to influence Democratic policy. Atheism per se is fine, but I quickly lose patience with smug little bastards who go out of their way to piss everybody off. Their attitude does not speak well of their aptitude at and understanding of politics.