The New York Times today completely missed the boat today in an article titled Majority Leader's Quest to Soften GOP's Image Hits Wall.
The article was inspired by Eric Cantor's failed effort to pass the Orwellian titled "Helping Sick Americans Now Act." If you only read the Times article, you'd think that the "HSANA" was a part of "rebranding" because it implemented Obamacare through the free market solution of high risk insurance pools:
The Helping Sick Americans Now Act sounded like solid middle ground — a measure to actually expand the part of President Obama’s health care law that created a federal “high-risk pool” in which people with pre-existing conditions could band together to buy subsidized insurance coverage. The provision was to be paid for by siphoning money from another part of Mr. Obama’s health care law, the Prevention and Public Health Fund.
What the Times didn't report is that the HSANA was a way to undermine Obamacare. They might even (as
Ed Kilgore did), quote Freedom Works VP, Dean Clancy:
H.R.1549 should be viewed as a tactical maneuver in a larger war, cannibalizing the implementation of ObamaCare exchanges in order to gain leverage in the larger fight for health care freedom.
So the "Fine Old Cannibals," as Kilgore called Cantor et al., were trying to "rebrand" by
undermining Obamacare -- facts that you would not know if you only read the Times.