In response to GOP Open To Supporting Landrieu Fix:
I’ve been mulling all of this over for the last couple of days, and I really can’t see any good practical OR political reason to open an ObamaCare relief valve. This whole thing has to go. Repeal is the only option, the only deal Republicans should be putting on the table. If the Democrats don’t want to support a repeal bill, the next offer should be a repeal bill.
I wrote about it at length here, but the bottom line is that we should all know there’s no way to “fix” ObamaCare. The longer it endures, the more damage it will do to the American people. Protracting the agony is both untrue to conservative principles, and just plain bad statesmanship. The proposed “fixes” will do nothing except postpone the collapse of the insurance market for another year, or hasten its demise, depending on whether they’re forced to keep offering policies that no longer make business sense.
Neither of those alternatives is good for the American people. The former is bad for Republicans politically. There’s no reason to give the New Fascists more time to point the heavy artillery of blame at their Little Partners, as Democrats set insurance companies up to be unspeakable villains who need to be punished harder, by an even bigger government. There’s no reason to spare Democrats from the horrifying fate that awaits them at the ballot box in 2014. America needs multiple effective political parties; the sooner the corrupt Democrat Party of today dies and is reborn as something more responsible and honest, the better. We don’t just need to repeal ObamaCare; we need to tear down the system that made it possible, and ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
I’m sure some of the Republicans pushing “fixes” like Fred Upton’s are planning a political bank shot where they get Democrats on record with votes for precisely the kind of seditious, unthinkable change to the “settled law of the land” they were raging against when Harry Reid shut the government down. In the end, I just cannot support the notion of doing anything injurious to the American people to score political points. And to be honest, I don’t trust this Republican Party to pull off a maneuver like that. They want Democrat fingerprints on the knife that killed ObamaCare; Democrats want Republican fingerprints on ObamaCare. I suspect the Party that controls 80 percent of the media is more likely to come out on top, in that sort of contest.
It’s time to put an end to ObamaCare so we can proceed with real, effective reforms. That’s what should motivate voters to go Republican in 2014. It should be an election about the shape of the post-ObamaCare world, because it’s painfully obvious to anyone paying attention that this nonsense is not working, at all. A true opposition party does not prop up a disastrous scheme because they think they can milk a political win out of its long, agonizing demise.
Mary Landrieu’s bill would kill ObamaCare fairly quickly. Fred Upton’s bill would kill it slowly. Repeal will kill it right now.