What a difference a tight poll in a general election makes. Case in point, Thom Tillis, the tea party Republican and state Speaker of the House in North Carolina, now running against Sen. Kay Hagan for the U.S. Senate. Back in April, during the primary, he ran this radio ad:
MAN: Thom Tillis has a proven record fighting against Obamacare.
WOMAN: Tillis stopped Obamacare's Medicaid expansion cold. It's not happening in North Carolina and it's because of Thom Tillis.
But that was way back in April, when he was fighting to prove his extremist credibility to Republican primary voters. Now? Now his tune has
definitely changed.
Asked if he thought it would be likely that the state legislature would expand Medicaid coverage after refusing to do so previously, Tillis said it might make sense once the state has better control of the financing of the program, which is notorious for its cost overruns.
He said he didn’t have an ideological objection to expanding the coverage. But he said when the state auditor told the previous governor that money was being wasted on it, the appropriate response would not have been to make it bigger and more costly.
"I would encourage the state legislature and governor to consider it if they're completely convinced they now have the situation under control," Tillis said.
Oh no, he didn't have an ideological objection to Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, not at all. It was all about fiscal responsibility. Which was bullshit in April, too. Because, as it turns out, there was
no crisis in Medicaid in North Carolina, ever. In fact, "data from the Kaiser Family Foundation have shown that North Carolina’s Medicaid program costs have increased at the slowest rate in the nation and per-capita costs are the lowest in the Southeast."
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Thom Tillis was full of shit when he "stopped Medicaid expansion cold," and he's full of shit now. But Tillis's contortions on the issue shows just how potent the issue is for Democrats, and what a flop Obamacare repeal has been for Republicans. It's definitely not 2010, anymore.