Of the many pathologies infecting the modern Republican party and conservatism generally is rosy thinking and a complete lack of foresight. The list is long: no one could have predicted that arming and training people like Osama bin Laden could backfire. Who could have predicted that tearing down Glass Steagal might crater the economy. Who knew that cutting taxes on the rich would not help the economy. Or that when you give arms to crazy dictators they do crazy things. Or that invading and conquering Iraq would be easy, so why have a plan B?
Sorry for all the hyperlinks, but it just kind of proves that pattern: these guys just aren’t too good at thinking ahead or pondering the “what ifs”. And so we come to the SCOTUS’s pending decision on King v. Burwell, the case which will determine if Obamacare’s subsidies to those of us that need them will continue. The GOP base, of course, is practically creaming their jeans that the court may gut Obamacare. But a few of the less-thick Republicans are getting worried because they have no plan at all for the aftermath of such a decision:
“It’s an opportunity that we’ve failed at for two decades. We’ve not been particularly close to being on the same page on this subject for two decades,” said a congressional Republican health policy aide who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “So this idea — we’re ready to go? Actually no, we’re not.”
Republican leaders recognize the dilemma. In King v. Burwell, they roundly claim the court ought to invalidate insurance subsidies in some three-dozen states, and that Congress must be ready with a response once they do. But conversations with more than a dozen GOP lawmakers and aides indicate that the party is nowhere close to a solution. Outside health policy experts consulted by the Republicans are also at odds on how the party should respond.
The party that has failed to unify behind an alternative to Obamacare for many years now has five months to reach an agreement. It’s an unenviable predicament, especially for the congressional Republicans leading the effort to devise a response — all of whom hail from states that could lose their subsidies.
It’s all rather delicious, in a whistling past the gallows kind of way. And by the looks of it, sheer chaos:
In an illustration of the depth of the struggle, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told TPM he would support the old Wyden-Bennett health care plan from 2009 if the court guts the ACA. But there’s one problem: that bill has an individual mandate similar to Obamacare, making it a political death-sentence for GOP leaders…
One big challenge, the Republican aide said, is that a GOP plan would be unlikely to cover as many people, making it an easy piñata for Democrats to pound. “That’s the brutal truth. We have a problem with that for very specific reasons. We don’t have good responses,” the aide said. “Show me the constituent in a town hall meeting who you can tell it’s OK for them to lose their health insurance.”
Read the whole thing. And when you get done laughing at the Republicans for once again painting themselves into a corner, start to get worried: this very reality could be coming any day now.
Conservatives do, indeed, have a Plan B.
It’s to double-down on Plan A.
That’s also the case for Plan’s C, D, E, and so forth…
And when they all fail, it wasn’t the fault of their first plan, it’s that Plan A failed to be – all together now – insufficiently conservative, and/or not supported hard enough!
All Together Now!
John Roberts will rescue them from the idiocy of King v. Burwell and sustain the ACA, no doubt by means of his own peculiar argument rather than the obvious one that King has no arguable case and no doubt doing something spiteful along the way as he did with the Medicaid expansion two years ago. They will repay him publicly by calling him a traitorous RINO and continue to howl for repeal, but they will be so glad that they don’t have to do anything about it.
That’s what they’re hoping for. They’re great at beating dead horses and making everything political. But when it comes to actual policy, they’re hopeless.
Sad that we have to hope for it too, but I do.
Actually John McCain tells ALL Americans what the TP/GOP has decided about the opinions of Americans.This is short and to the point and demonstrates just how out of control these TP/GOP Congress members are,”get out of here you low life scum.” Short and to the point and many still wonder why nothing can get done by the TP/GOP Congress members.
It’s really too bad that the Republicans’ best Hail Mary play in this situation is to pass a clean single-payer health care bill that covers everyone. Declare it their accomplishment and talk about that do-nothing Democratic Congress of the last six years.
I don’t think they’ll cross from campaign positioning (the $750 billion-dollar cut to Medicare) to actual against-type accomplishment. That’s a place that their cynicism cannot go.
But veto bait will not count.
The greatest conservative in history was Benjamin Disraeli, who fought Gladstone’s cautious, gradual increase of the suffrage by introducing the Great Reform of 1867, which effectively enfranchised all British adult males. That’s the equivalent of Republicans proposing any universal health care plan. The Liberals won the 1868 election though, with the new working-class voters voting for their interests instead of voting for Disraeli.
No living Republican is anywhere near in Disraeli’s league, anyhow.
I assumed the plan was to (a) blame Obama for the gutting of his own law and (b) assure whites who lose coverage that Those People still have really excellent coverage, thanks to ACORN or the New Black Panthers or Al Sharpton or something.
I assumed that the plan was to say that the loss of the insurance subsidies is the fault of Obamacare.
Psst… hey you republican lurkers! Yes, you! Got a hot tip for a plan to fix Obamacare for good. Just sneak in some weekend and delete the Medicare age requirement from all their computers. Yep, its that easy and you’ll get all the credit. Hurry up before the socialists think of it and steal the opportunity.
They can’t even see the rationale for thinking three days ahead based on probabilities. Thus, they bitch when public officials prepare for a blizzard, but the potential full brunt of such a storm misses them. They also bitch when public officials downplay a potential storm and they get walloped with a big one that “nobody could foresee.” Essentially, they have yet to grow up.
That was Carter, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So, this is a foreign policy establishment fuck-up, not a conservative fuck-up.
The reason the Republicans don’t have a solution is that with them it’s “ideology über Alles,” and THERE IS NO REMOTELY WORKABLE SOLUTION conformable to their ideology. Even if they were much, much smarter than they actually are, they wouldn’t be able to come up with a solution. It’s literally impossible. It’s like expecting a bunch of Flat-Earthers to come up with a new way of measuring the surface of the globe.
The best they could do is come up with some total BS like Ryan’s budget. But that wouldn’t get anywhere because with Obamacare we’re talking about something that is already up and running and has already insured millions of previously uninsured people.
The reason the Republicans lack foresight and prudence is that with them, ideology and blind faith is a substitute for having to actually think.
I wonder if there are enough voters who would lose coverage to unseat Republicans in “safe” districts or make their lives difficult. They might place themselves out of reach of the presidency for decades but that’s happening anyway. Something like this might just accelerate the inevitable, when Republicans can’t get elected to national office and find it increasingly difficult in statewide offices.
They don’t need foresight. They don’t need backup plans. They and their patrons almost never face negative consequences for their actions. In many cases, the chaos and disorder they create serves their ends. If it’s a domestic problem, more “free market” voodoo will magically solve the problem. If it’s a foreign problem, more bombs and bullets or tough talk and brinkmanship will do the trick. There is absolutely no need for foresight in their program. Foresight is about governing, they’re not about governing, they’re about looting and “creative destruction”.