As Republicans struggle to rebrand their party as something other than the austerity for the 98% party, their own party members are obstructing them at every turn. House Republican party leaders tried to push an “alternative” to ObamaCare on Wednesday — “Helping Sick Americans Now” — only to be forced to pull the bill before the vote, after their own members wouldn’t support it.
The Koch founded FreedomWorks gloated about the “embarrassed House leaders”, after declaring that their purpose was patient centered healthcare (what?), “Embarrassed House leaders now have an unmistakable signal of just how badly rank and file Republicans want to take down the whole law, not just a key piece of its implementation machinery. If H.R.1549 had passed, it would have lent momentum to our effort to impede ObamaCare implementation. Now that it has failed at the hands of repeal advocates, the pressure for full repeal has gone up and power on this issue has shifted to those who want it all. Freedom fighters win. This is good. Let’s keep up the pressure.”
FreedomWorks supported “Helping Sick Americans Now” because it impedes the implementation of ObamaCare by “cannibalizing” it, “Enactment of the cleverly drafted bill would help impede the implementation of ObamaCare. Contrary to the assertions of some, H.R.1549 doesn’t “fix,” “expand,” or otherwise “improve” ObamaCare. Instead, it effectively cannibalizes ObamaCare to impede its implementation.”
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But House Republicans complained that they didn’t want to replace one piece of “big government” with another. Reuters reported that several Republican conservatives were “openly opposing the bill and questioning” why their leaders would even offer up such a measure, “The issue I think many of us are having with this particular piece of legislation… you’re replacing one big government program with another big government program,” said Representative Raul Labrador of Idaho.
Here’s the problem: Republicans ran on “repeal and replace” ObamaCare. This failed. Then it was revealed that there was no “replace”, just repeal. In a desperate effort at rebranding, Republicans rushed to come up with a “replace”. Their alternative (H.R.1549 ) is one that the Senate won’t pass, and the White House said it would veto, but no matter. The House isn’t interested in actual policy or governing. instead, they spend the few days they work making showy but irrelevant speeches and show votes for their next campaign.
The “replace” is a bill called “Helping Sick Americans Now”. The problem with this replacement is that it is allegedly a replacement, and Republicans never had any intention of replacing ObamaCare. So, the House tea members rebelled, demanding that they should be allowed to vote simply on repealing ObamaCare – especially the first termers, who didn’t get a chance to vote in the more than 30 previous show votes the House has devoted to repealing ObamaCare.
Now, why would they want to do that when they know it’s going nowhere? Why waste more millions on show votes? It’s all about their reelection and appeasing the tea base. They don’t want to be on record actually voting to replace ObamaCare.
Conservatives threatened to score Republicans on whether or not they supported “Help Sick Americans Now”, with RedState declaring a jihad on “idiots in Washington, D.C.”:
Frankly, the GOP should not be in the position of wanting to save the pre-existing conditions mandate in ObamaCare.
In fact, the GOP should not want to fix ObamaCare at all.
Only a bunch of idiots in Washington, DC in the Republican Party could look at the rising animosity of the American people toward Obamacare and all its costs and burdens and say, “By God let’s fix it!”
In other words, the base still believes all of the hysteria the GOP hyped up against ObamaCare, even though ObamaCare is based on the free market system of competition and was modeled upon the Massachusetts version, signed into law by Republican and failed 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney. They’re afraid that Republicans might actually “fix” ObamaCare. This is not something I would worry too much about if I were a conservative, as House Republicans haven’t demonstrated a propensity to fix anything – except to work less hours – since Obama took office.
The fact that Republican leadership had to pull the bill before casting their votes is yet another example of the real trouble Speaker John Boehner is in; he can’t lead the House because the House is full of conservative extremists hell bent on adhering to their alleged ideology, even when it makes no sense. It’s enough to make a person pity the Speaker, but then, he chose this party. An aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told Reuters that Republican leadership is confident they can bring the bill up for a vote after their next week long recess.
Remember this the next time Speaker Boehner tries to blame President Obama or Senate Democrats for not getting something done. Boehner can’t even bring up a vote on his own party’s bills, because House Republicans are too busy running for office to bother trying to actually legislate.
Image: Washington Post
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