Learning is hard.
Believe it or not, this is from today:
Boehner: "We want to repeal Obamacare and replace it with patient-centered health care.
— @frankthorpNBC
The learning curve here, it is flat. Shutting down the government and threatening default over Obamacare was disastrous for Republicans. They are
far less popular than the law they are trying to destroy and their obsession with destroying the law is why they are so reviled. But still,
they persist.
Powerful grassroots organizations appear ready to back House GOP leadership on “targeted strikes” to weaken the law, a strategy they criticized as insufficiently aggressive in the months before the government closed.
They hope that piecemeal votes against ObamaCare will put points on the board and magnify Democratic divisions ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Democratic division on Obamacare is a thing of the past. There's one Senate Democrat who is going against the grain, Sen. Joe Manchin (WV). He wants to delay the implementation of the individual mandate. But Manchin has
always been opposed to the individual mandate, so that's hardly groundbreaking. What you saw throughout the shutdown fiasco is a Democratic Party that was rock-solid, in both the House and the Senate. They're not going to play that game anymore.
Repeal is not going to happen. Not a chip at a time. Not all at once. It's dead. The rest of the country has moved on. If Republicans insist on continuing this fight, it really will be the hill they die on.