Michael Ramirez cartoon via U.S. News and World Report
The headline: Pat Toomey says GOP wasn't ready with healthcare ...because they didn't think
Trump would win. That’s the conclusion in this Jul-07 report by Robert
Laurie at the Canada Free Press:
For some time, I’ve been arguing that the GOP
should have had a plan to repeal ObamaCare ready - and on the President’s desk
- the week that Donald Trump took office. The ACA’s elimination should have
been a day one priority, then you could rest of the year working on healthcare
fixes and tax reform. I’ve heard a whole pile of excuses about why that
didn’t happen and I’ve never really bought any of them.
There were only two answers that made sense:
Either the GOP didn’t really want to repeal ObamaCare, or they simply dropped
the ball and we’re witnessing one of history’s worst cases of political
shortsightedness.
While I still suspect there are a lot of
Republicans who’d love nothing more than to leave the ACA in place and have the
whole issue go away, it sounds more like the GOP just ...failed.
According to [Senator] Pat Toomey (R-PA), no one bothered to ready an ObamaCare repeal
bill, because they all thought Hillary was going to be your next President.
He made the remarks during a town hall, hosted by
ABC27 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
“I didn’t expect Donald Trump to win. I think most
of my colleagues didn’t. So we didn’t expect to be in this situation.
And given how difficult it is to get to a
consensus, it was hard to force that until there was a need to.”
In other words; “We could vote to repeal ObamaCare
40 times when we knew Obama wouldn’t sign the bill, but we never wasted our
time preparing for the eventuality that we might actually win the next
election.” That’s just pathetic, and it validates a lot of criticisms
that Democrats were lobbing at Republicans back during the Obama years.
It’s an admission that their healthcare votes
during the Obama administration really were just obstructionist political
theater and it suggests that they spent more time preparing for a
Hillary presidency than they spent trying to secure a victory.
Remember, they had eight years to ready
a repeal, replacement, or fix. Instead, they put on a big show, yakked
about their alleged principles, smiled at their constituents, and kicked the
can.
They squandered their time, your money, and our
collective efforts because it was easier than getting together on a solution.
No wonder they’re so despised.
My own take: When Senator Toomey admits that the GOP did not seriously prepare for the repeal of Obamacare
because they did not expect to win the House, Senate, and White House, he makes
the GOP look like fools, but that’s probably better than admitting the truth. I suspect that Laurie’s alternative is correct: the GOP
does not want to repeal Obamacare. Nearly all of the GOP, including the
so-called Freedom Caucus, are members of The UniParty, and they have already
been bought.
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