Here's a novel approach to explaining what Republicans have been doing on Trumpcare.
So conservatives have now cast aside their high-minded arguments of political principle, replacing them with dense discussions of policy. Pre-existing conditions, risk pools and premium costs—not the more conventional Republican disquisitions in favor of the free market, personal responsibility and smaller government—dominate the debate today.
This dramatic shift in focus has confirmed what conservatives said they always feared when Democrats granted the government expansive new powers over health care. The government can giveth, they said, but it can almost never taketh away.
The health care law, said Thomas Miller, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has underscored how new entitlements inevitably become part of what he called the "demilitarized zone" of politics.
"One of the problems Republicans have had in 2017 is that the narrative and the discussion have changed," Mr. Miller said.
Right. What we've been seeing is "dense discussions of policy." Yes, words like "pre-existing conditions," "risk pools," and "premium costs" have been talked about by Republicans, but calling those dense policy discussions in the way Republicans have used them is laughable. They use those words just to sound like they know what they're talking about while they put forward a bill on the only thing they do care about—cutting taxes for rich people.
It is true that Republicans have been forced to pretend like they understand these things so that they can attempt to more effectively lie about them. But it's also a case of the dog finally catching the semi-truck. There never has really been "principle" behind Republican opposition to Obamacare. It's all been about resisting the nation's first black president, about hurting who they deem "undeserving" people, and tax cuts. If they had any concern at all for crafting a healthcare policy for the country, that's what they might have come up with. Sometimes during the past SEVEN YEARS in which they've been promising it.
They don't. And that's what's going to bite them in the ass. These are the things they need to understand and appreciate because they are the life and death issues involved here. They are the things that the American public who have benefited from Obamacare very well understand, and taking it away is a very bad idea.
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