So much for that

If you fail to understand this post, that's only because it's incomprehensible. The pols involved are flailing about, polling is hopelessly tangled, strategists are conflicted, the media reporting on it are either ahead or behind the curve but really haven't any idea which, and I no more understand what I'm writing about than you can reading it.

In question form, the subject matter is simple enough: Are some Republican pols breaking with their traditional humbuggery and accepting Obamacare's permanence?

Last week, in Erle Stanley Gardner style, I pondered the Curious Case of Jack Kingston, a Georgia congressman now running for Senate who, as The Hill put it, was "calling for improvements to ObamaCare, breaking with his party's proclaimed policy to simply let the law self-destruct." Or at least that seemed what Kingston was doing, or rather saying: "There’s some criticism, 'Well, are you helping improve this law when you make [a] change [to it]? And should we be doing that?' A lot of conservatives say, 'Nah, let’s just step back and let this thing fall to pieces on its own.' But I don’t think that’s always the responsible thing to do."

This week, Kingston "clarified" the very essence of responsibility, which The Hill quotes: "By saying that’s not a responsible thing to do, I meant to say, if it’s teetering, you have to push it over the cliff." (You know, just as all Congresses have always done with any large program--say, Social Security or Medicare--that ever found itself in need of some help.)  

But here's the real kicker. The above quote is dropped by The Hill into a story whose lede blares, "In a significant development, GOP candidates have embraced a concept that was unthinkable a year ago: fixing President Obama’s landmark law." Kingston's clarifying, over-the-cliff-we-go quote is, like, featured as an example of this "significant development," which is just as undetectable in other GOP candidates whom The Hill also quotes. A few GOP-proposed bills are indeed referenced in the story, but none has anything to do with "fixing" anything. Each is but sniper fire aimed at the Affordable Care Act. 

And yet, one senses a kind of paralysis seizing Republican pols. They seem suddenly stunned by the always and remarkably obvious: that they really can't kill Obamacare--and absent that magnificent obsession, the poor dears are adrift. As are we, in trying to understand them.

 

Comments

[William Caulfield]

I'm coining a new acronym: WTH. It represents Defcon 1 of political rhetoric: "Worse than Hitler!"

The Republicans took their opposition to the ACA to WTH levels very quickly. They only now seem to be learning that there is little room to walk back from that peak and no way to crank it up any further.

[Peter G]

Indeed Caulfield, the amplifier only went to eleven. And they had it cranked. Where do you go from here once the news cycle moves on and the website functions.

[AnneJ]

Well I guess they can always spend their days babbling among themselves in the Fox bubble. Everything about the right reeks of cognitive dissonance to me.

[shsavage]

The newly enlightened GOP will simply offer "fixes" to O-Care that are, in effect, poison pills. So, puuullleeze, no fixes from the GOP! I'd rather have their honest Cruzade to kill it than their dishonest "concern."