....says the purity fetishist who is no longer in politics and doesn't have to worry about actually winning elections anymore:
Republican tensions over ObamaCare rose Tuesday after Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint ramped up pressure on the party not to extend health insurance subsidies — even temporarily — that the Supreme Court could erase within days.
Which it won't, so DeMint is working himself into another of his trademark froths for nothing.
In an op-ed titled "Let the subsidies die," the former senator and conservative kingmaker...
As if!
....took aim at Republicans who are eyeing a backup plan that temporarily preserves the subsidies to avoid massive disruptions and [another] loss of coverage for millions of Americans.
"It would be uncaring and unfair for Congress to force taxpayers to continue funding ObamaCare's subsidies, DeMint wrote in the Washington Examiner. "Extending the subsidies would be political malpractice, not just a mere Band-Aid upon an infected wound." He argued that it would be "far better" to simply repeal the entire law.
That's easy for DeMint to say, given the politics of the issue, which were deliberately built into the Unaffordable Care Act. Entitlement programs are designed to engender a public dependency that serves as an electoral barrier and shield against their ever being abolished. What he's describing is an idealistic dream that completely ignores that reality. Sure, ObamaCare is still unpopular, and sure, in a perfect world we could repeal it overnight (although in a perfect world it never would have been foisted on the country in the first place), but we don't live in a perfect world.
Here's the reality: ObamaCare will never be so much as touched until Barack Obama is replaced by a conservative president and the Congress remains in GOP hands - so 2017 at the earliest, if ever. However, if the SCOTUS were to strike down federal ObamaCare subsidies, that would be now, with Obama still in the White House and leading the Democrat-Media Complex in another flash mob campaign against the "rightwing extremist Supreme Court that has taken away Americans' healthcare," and the Republican Congress which, via "guilt" by association, would be obligated to restore the subsidies or face political annihilation.
This is why Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) is tying a temporary subsidies extension to repeal of the Individual and Employer Mandates, which would effectively gut the UCA. It would provide a "soft landing" for millions of policyholders who would otherwise suffer their second loss of coverage in as many years through no fault of their own (aside from those who are also Obama voters).
Does that bill have a prayer of passage either as long as Obama remains in the White House? Of course not. But it puts the PR ball back on The One's court in the event that King v. Burwell doesn't go his way.
In a nutshell, policy does not take place outside of politics, any more than fish swim through a vacuum. Conservative officeholders have to do the best they can within that proverbial Overton Window, and the grassroots have to accept that and not crucify their own for being unable to do the impossible.
Jim DeMint militantly won't accept that reality, which is what makes him so unserious a political figure. And one for whom, in reality, anti-GOP fratricide is his true core mission:
Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, dropped a broad hint that there could be political consequences for Republican lawmakers who try to create a subsidy patch. "It will be difficult for a Republican to go home and explain how saving a key plank of Obamacare helps ensure Obamacare is repealed in 2017," Holler said.
They can't repeal ObamaCare now, Dan, and they can't repeal it in 2017 of Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer are running the country.
In addition, a DeMint-founded super PAC has specialized in taking aim at Republicans it deems insufficiently conservative. In the 2014 election cycle, the Senate Conservatives Fund spent more than $7 million helping favored candidates — and torpedoing those out of favor, according to figures compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Most, of not all, of those candidates lost, of course.
Ken Cuccinelli, the president of Senate Conservatives Fund, was blunt about threatening to support primary challenges against Republican lawmakers who back an extension of ObamaCare subsidies.
So did he in his race for governor of Virginia in 2013, as I recall.
"If the Supreme Court strikes down the ObamaCare subsidies and mandates....
Which it won't.
....Republicans in Congress should not extend them," Cuccinelli told Bloomberg in a statement. "Republicans should fight for full repeal, as they promised time and time again. SCF supports conservative candidates and a lawmaker's position on ObamaCare is one of the most important issues we will examine when deciding whether to support a primary challenger."
"Fight! Fight! Fight!" again, leading to "Defeat! Defeat! Defeat!" after voters don't see that the same way DeMint and Cuccinelli and Holler and Heritage Action do.
You know what I think? I think they don't want ObamaCare repealed any more than Obama does. Because its very existence is the perfect truncheon with which to bludgeon the Republican Party into permanent, Whig-like political irrelevance.
If I ever have another opportunity to help interview Jim DeMint again, that's the question I'm going to ask him.
No comments:
Post a Comment