The Republicans’ Biggest Obsession

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The Republicans’ Biggest Obsession

By ThinkProgress War Room on Jul 2, 2012 at 5:04 pm

GOP Focused on Old Battles, Not Moving America Forward

As we discussed Friday, the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding Obamacare has really thrown Republicans for a loop. Things didn’t get any better over the weekend. Instead of moving on and working to move the country forward, Republicans are continuing to obsess over taking away people’s health care. They don’t seem to have a coherent strategy or a plan to match their obsession — just a commitment to turn health care back over to the insurance companies at the expense of jobs or our economy.

Here’s the rundown on the GOP’s all-over-the-map behavior on health care.

• VOTE TO TAKE AWAY POPULAR BENEFITS, AGAIN: After Thursday’s ruling, Republicans immediately announced that next week they’ll once again vote to put the insurance companies back in control, take away health coverage from more than 30 million Americans, and rescind popular benefits that millions of young Americans, seniors, and children with pre-existing conditions, among others, are already experiencing. It seems that Republicans want to waste time re-fighting old battles instead of working on jobs or the economy.

• IGNORE THE LAW, DENY POOR PEOPLE COVERAGE OUT OF SPITE: Republican governors are lining up to say that they’re going to continue to ignore the law. In the case of implementing health insurance exchanges, this makes no sense as states who fail to do so will just have an exhange setup by the federal government instead. In the case of rejecting the expansion of Medicaid, which is almost entirely funded by the federal government, it seems cruel to deny coverage to poor Americans in order to re-fight a political battle.

• LEAVE TENS OF MILLIONS WITHOUT INSURANCE: Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY) admitted yesterday that, for Republicans, providing health care to the uninsured “is not the issue.”

• LEAVE PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS OUT IN THE COLD: Mitt Romney has already confirmed that his plan would deny insurance to millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions and yesterday morning Speaker Boehner admitted that Republicans oppose writing a ban on such discrimination into law.

• WILD CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) decided to go with the conspiracy theory angle, saying that Obamacare will “Sovietize” the health care system. Yesterday, a top Mitt Romney surrogate also dabbled in conspiracy theories when she alleged that Obamacare is bad for breast cancer patients. (It isn’t.)

• GO BACK TO AN OLD, FAILED PLAN: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) says the GOP alternative to Obamacare is still the one from 2009 that the CBO said would leave 52 MILLION Americans uninsured and would add $8 BILLION to the deficit.

• NO PLAN: Cantor’s assertion was contradicted by one of his own Members, Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE), who admitted that the GOP has no plan to replace Obamacare.

• THROW OUT THE POPULAR PARTS TOO: Meanwhile, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) says he won’t countenance any talk of keeping even the wildly popular parts of Obamacare, adding, “it’s all or none.”

• PUNCH AT OBAMA, HIT MITT ROMNEY INSTEAD: Dozens of Republicans and outside groups launched a death panels-style false attack following the High Court’s decision, only to find that attacking the Obamacare mandate as a “tax increase” immediately boomeranged back onto their own nomineee for president.When asked yesterday if Mitt Romney was a tax raiser because of the Massachusetts mandate, all Sen. McConnell could respond with was, “I think Gov. Romney will have to speak for himself about what was done in Massachusetts.” This morning, in a stunning blow to the GOP’s main new attack on Obamacare, a top Romney campaign official said that Romney doesn’t believe that the mandate is a tax.Just to be clear, Obamacare is actually a tax cut for millions of Americans.

Special note to Republicans: according to today’s Kaiser poll, 56 percent of people are ready for Republicans to stop trying to block the health care law’s implementation and move on.

Watch this space tomorrow for more on the other issues that Republicans obsess over instead of working on jobs or the economy.