Turns out they didn’t mean it.
Tuesday’s ignominious Mitch McConnell withdrawal of Senate Republicans’ latest half-baked and half-hearted “repeal and replace” effort sealed it: They never meant it. Those seven years of sending Republican-backed repeal Obamacare bills to President Obama’s desk on the guarantee they would be vetoed was mere Kabuki theatre.
They were a sham. Always a sham. This time, I predict, a sham too far.
Since passage of the absurdly named Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in 2010, Republican politicians have won nearly a thousand city, county, state and federal elections running, in no small part, against Obamacare.
For all the recent media backed polls (yes, polls, they’re back) touting Obamacare’s current popularity just remember those elections. That’s a thousand polls using actual voters with electoral teeth. I’m no politician — perish the thought — but if I were a Republican officeholder I’d think about that number, a thousand, and muse: “Hmm, maybe voters are hinting at something.”
Not for nothing are Republicans called “the stupid party.” This latest debacle recalls a term first heard at Fort Leonard Wood during boot camp: “Untrainable.” Over a year ago I switched my party identification from Republican to Independent based on the demonstrable truth of the old chestnut that “there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats."
Consider Tuesday exhibit A.
We have one party in Washington D.C.: The Cronycrats. This latest example of the shell game Cronycrats have always played underscores how parlous a state our Representative Republic is in. On Tuesday we witnessed, without a fig leaf of shame, the truth that our elections, at least to Congress, no longer have consequences.
Cronycrats, with their monied mistresses — the lobbyists — long have they ruled.
The palpable frustration of millions who’ve seen their insurance deductibles and premiums skyrocket since “Affordable Care” became the law of the land will go back on the boil. The number of counties will increase to the point of entire states that will have either one insurance provider or none participating in their exchanges.
And to all you smirking on the sidelines Democrats, in the immortal words of Han Solo: “Laugh it up fuzzball.” President Trump is right. Like the Titanic, when the stern of Obamacare goes vertical before plunging into the murky depths, all eyes will be upon you. What have you done? What have any of you done — besides cynically try to buy votes — to at least mitigate this disaster?
Another sad old truth about the abysmal state of our elected officials seems sadly born to light: We have the best politicians money can buy. But who’s money bought them? Need we once again “follow the money?” Who’s in the pocket of Big Pharma, insurance and any other corporations tied to this boondoggle?
But hey, follow the bouncing media ball. What about Russia — and how they “hacked the election? Brother Barack, where are you when we need you? Please come back and tell us all how the 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back.