Back in March, this is what the Kaiser Family Foundation found in their monthly healthcare survey: people are really, really ready for Congress to stop fighting over Obamacare.
And now, four months and
20+ million new health insurance enrollees later, Republicans are wondering if
running against Obamacare in 2014 is going to work for them.
Many Republican operatives still believe, despite the challenges, that Obamacare will be a prominent part of GOP campaigns come the fall. But candidates will have to calibrate their messages in new ways to reach a hardened audience. And perhaps more than anything else, they will need to offer voters plenty of other reasons to vote against the Democrats.
"We always felt it was an important issue, even the most important issue," said Tim Phillips, president of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, which has spent tens of millions of dollars so far this cycle on anti-Obamacare ads. "But it clearly is not the only issue." […]
But Republicans, though mindful of the challenges, aren't ready to let Obamacare go, not yet. Phillips, for one, says the candidates and groups like his have to be sure to introduce new information about Obamacare when they talk about the issue. (AFP ran an ad against Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in April criticizing the law for limiting the numbers of doctors patients can see, a line of attack largely ignored in most negative ads.) Others argue candidates must do more to demonstrate the real-world impact of the legislation.
Of course they're not ready to let Obamacare go. The entire tea party has been focused on nothing but Obamacare for five years. The Kochs have invested hundred of millions of dollars in it, and promise hundreds of millions more to back up the candidates who will keep spouting their approved message. And they'll keep coming up with those "real-world impact" ads that
we've all had so much fun debunking these last few months.
Of course they're going to keep fighting on Obamacare. It's part of the Koch habit they can't shake.