The GOP is apparently not done failing at health care

By Rafi Schwartz  |  March 29, 2017 | 9:11pm
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Congressional Republicans are reportedly going to try one more time to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Apparently, their disastrous attempt to replace Obamacare with the American Health Care Act wasn’t enough to put them off.

Citing two GOP lawmakers, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that House Republicans are considering a new repeal vote as early as next week. News of the effort comes one day after House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) told reporters that “We’re closer today to repealing Obamacare than we ever were before,” adding that the GOP is “more resolved than ever to repeal this law.”

But, while Ryan declined to comment on any timelines for yet another repeal push, Bloomberg’s sources—who spoke to the publication on condition of anonymity—suggested the vote could be scheduled sometime before the House’s two-week break, starting April 7.

Despite the humiliation the GOP experienced after their attempt to repeal Obamacare fell completely to pieces before our very eyes, the desire to yank President Obama’s most significant political achievement is apparently too strong for many Republicans to ignore.

Unfortunately, the GOP’s spirit may be willing, but its political flesh is battered and bruised. And that could pose big problems.

“If we just sit up here and play tiddlywinks, it’ll hurt us [in 2018],” Virginia Rep. Morgan Griffith (who is not himself involved in any plans to schedule a vote in the coming weeks) told Bloomberg, using the sort of up to date analogy you’d expect from a 59 year old congressional Republican.

“You can’t spend six years campaigning every day, telling the voters ‘if you elect us we’ll do this,’ and then don’t do it,” Senator Ted Cruz warned during a recent speech to the Federalist Society.

The question then becomes: Can Republicans tweak their universally loathed health care policy enough to win over the party holdouts who prevented its progress in the first place? (While you think that one over, go ahead and ask yourself: Will Charlie Brown finally kick that football, after all?)

One person who doesn’t think so is President Trump, who has spent the days following his Affordable Health Care Act defeat either pretending like it’s no big deal, or proclaiming that it’s Democrats who would help him pass health care reform—after Obamacare “folds.”

But while the president seems content (or, at least, disinterested enough) to move on from his humiliating defeat, House Republicans just can’t seem to quit tilting at this particular windmill. Oregon Rep. Greg Walden framed a possible revival of an Obamacare push in messianic terms, telling Bloomberg: “We’re approaching the Easter season. Some things rise from the dead.”

Of course, the other thing that rises from the dead is a brain-dead zombie—one that simply shuffles around, moaning at people for a while, until it’s mercifully put out of its misery for good.

 
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