Remember how Republican Bob Corker said that the Republicans made a big mistake in not working with Dems on health insurance reform? And then he had to recant by saying that there was no way he could support the current financial reform bill?
It happened again, this time on repeal. Just this week, Corker injected some reality into the repeal frenzy by saying: "The fact is that’s not going to happen, OK?" I'll let Greg Sargent take it from here.
Naturally, this left some folks mighty ticked off. So now Corker’s gotten on the phone with The Weekly Standard to clarify. Sort of.
Corker told The Standard he only meant that repeal can’t happen next year, not that it can never happen. “It’s an issue of simple math,” Corker said, adding that as long as Obama is president, “it takes 67 votes in the Senate for that to occur.”
But, tellingly, when asked by The Standard if he would commit to supporting repeal in 2012 if a Republican is elected President, he demurred.
All of which is to say that the folks pushing for repeal are signaling that they’re going to keep this crusade going for years to come. Here, for instance, is another writer suggesting that Republicans might be able to repeal Obamacare in the year 2014 if they develop large enough Congressional majorities.
As Rachel Maddow has been pointing out for the last two weeks, this is about fundraising. This is about Republicans leveraging the anger of their crazy base to get more money out of them. "Give us a majority in Congress," they say, "and a Republican president," and then they'll repeal it. But that's going to cost an awful lot of money, so open up your checkbook and give 'til it hurts.