“The best thing is to declare last year’s election a mistrial on ObamaCare”
by digby
Jim DeMint who famously called the ACA President Obama’s “Waterloo” weighs in today with an op-ed telling Republicans they should declare the 2012 election “a mistrial.” This is because the people foolishly failed to vote on the basis of the GOP’s scare mongering about health care reform as they should have. And anyway behaving like assholes is good politics:
I can hear many conservative friends saying to me right around this point: “Jim, we agree with you that ObamaCare is going to wreck the country, but elections have consequences.” I have three responses.
The first is that ObamaCare was not the central fight in 2012, much to the disappointment of conservatives. Republicans hoped that negative economic news would sweep them to victory, and exit polls confirmed that the economy, not health care, was the top issue. The best thing is to declare last year’s election a mistrial on ObamaCare.
Second, the lives of most Americans are not dominated by the electoral cycle. They shouldn’t have to wait three more years for Congress to give them relief from this law, especially when the president has so frequently given waivers to his friends. Full legislative repeal may not be possible while President Obama remains in office, but delaying implementation by withholding funds from a law that is proven to be unfair, unworkable and unaffordable is a reasonable and necessary fight.
There’s a third reason not to stop fighting. Forget the consultants, the pundits and the pollsters; good policy is good politics. If the Republicans had not fought on ObamaCare, the compromise would have been over the budget sequester. Instead, they have retained the sequester and for the past three months ObamaCare and its failings have been front and center in the national debate. Its disastrous launch was spotlighted by our defund struggle, not overshadowed, as some contend. With a revived and engaged electorate, ObamaCare will now be the issue for the next few years.
It’s great sport to make fun of these people. But a whole lot of them really believe this nonsense. And I honestly don’t think they’ve been chastised by their unpopularity at all. Until they are replaced in the congress by people who are less conservative, they have no reason to be. And right now, the threat to most Republicans is coming from the right.
h/t to Greg Sargent who has more on this subject. Wait until you read what they’re saying about immigration reform.
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