Republican leadership has decided that they need to prove to the country that they can actually legislate responsibly, and thus are supposedly going to be focusing on
incremental changes to Obamacare, rather than full repeal.
Of course, what counts as incremental is questionable. For example, the legislation recently passed by the House to change the definition of full-time work in the law from 30 hours/week to 40 could throw one million people off of their employer-based health insurance and add $53 billion to the deficit in the next ten years. That's hardly insignificant. But it's now apparently the new reasonable.
“I’m guessing that they’ve had this ‘squirrel finds a nut’ moment of reasonableness,” one Senate GOP aide said. […]
"If we can show that we can lead, we might get an even bigger majority in 2016. We might get the White House," the Republican aide said. "Republicans can say, 'See, we were right? Put us in charge, and we’ll repeal the whole damn thing.'"
The change in tone can be seen even among hard-line Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)—who recently said he wanted to fix the "most onerous" pieces of ObamaCare.
Not all hardline Republicans.
Multiple members of the House GOP have already put forward ObamaCare repeal bills. So too have Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La) and David Vitter (R-La.), fresh off their 2014 elections.
Brent Bozell, the firebrand leader of the Tea Party group ForAmerica, warned that the Republicans who are caving on ObamaCare are creating “civil wars” within the party.
Nearly a dozen Tea Party members announced plans this week to leave the House conservative policy group, the Republican Study Committee, with ObamaCare as key area of dissent.
In other words, Republicans are in as much disarray as they've ever been on Obamacare. Leadership is trying to signal to the U.S. Supreme Court that it's safe to gut the law because they'll
have a plan to minimize the chaos that would ensue if millions lost their insurance. But there's clearly still no plan, and there's still no interest in even having a plan in a very big chunk of the party.
