5 thoughts on “Twitter: RT @politicalmath: .@brendanloy …”
gahrie
I think the mandate is pretty clear to everyone..repeal Obamacare and get the nation’s fiscal health fixed
dcl
Given that “Obamacare” hasn’t even gone into effect yet, and the nation’s fiscal health is primarily the fault of the Republicans, this seems irrationally stupid.
David K.
Yeah, we should go back to letting the for-profit health insurers deny claims and letting people die so they can make a profit! That system is so much better! It’s even lead to the U.S. spending more of and more of its GDP on health care than every other major nation out there. The system works! Go conservativisim!
Brendan Loy
Actually, the Republicans say they support the portions of ObamaCare that prevent pre-existing condition denials. They merely oppose the other portions, like the individual mandate, that are self-evidently necessary to make the pre-existing condition provision workable. So basically, the Republicans don’t support the old, pre-ObamaCare status quo; instead, they support a “solution” that will either cause rates to skyrocket (even more than they already are) or cause the private health insurance industry to go bankrupt!
But they’re the ones we should be trusting with our nation’s fiscal health. Riiiiight.
Actually, though, I’m not being fair… or perhaps I’m being too fair. The Republicans don’t support repealing ObamaCare at all. They support engaging in transparent political grandstanding about the repeal of ObamaCare. They know it can’t possibly be repealed before 2013 at the earliest, so this grandstanding is totally cost-free for the moment. They can promise to “repeal” it, and even hold a sham symbolic vote in which it’s “repealed”! And then Obama can veto the repeal bill, and save the GOP the trouble of crafting a workable alternative policy. The Republicans will figure out in 2013, if they have to, what actual policy solution they intend to put forward. Or, more likely, they’ll find some new way to punt the issue further down the road, ideally until some future Democratic administration has to clean up the mess (sound familiar?) and the Republicans can once again call their pragmatic compromise solutions “socialist,” demagogue the issue to death, return to power on the basis of half-truths and quasi-arguments, and we start the whole shambolic dance all over again. In the mean time, for present purposes, the Republicans are perfectly safe taking a politically popular, happy-sounding psuedo-position (Repeal ObamaCare, Except All The Good Parts!) that lacks any practical coherence whatsoever, as the public is too dumb, the media too lazy, and the Tea Party too blind to point any of this out. YAY! VOTE GOP! PALIN-BECK ’12!
Brendan, your last paragraph sounds eerily like the Democrats’ campaign logic on Iraq from 2004 to 2008. I guess the Republicans were smart enough to learn from their opponents.
RT @politicalmath: .@brendanloy 3 weeks + 1 day from now, Reps will be over-reading their mandate #boldpredictions
I think the mandate is pretty clear to everyone..repeal Obamacare and get the nation’s fiscal health fixed
Given that “Obamacare” hasn’t even gone into effect yet, and the nation’s fiscal health is primarily the fault of the Republicans, this seems irrationally stupid.
Yeah, we should go back to letting the for-profit health insurers deny claims and letting people die so they can make a profit! That system is so much better! It’s even lead to the U.S. spending more of and more of its GDP on health care than every other major nation out there. The system works! Go conservativisim!
Actually, the Republicans say they support the portions of ObamaCare that prevent pre-existing condition denials. They merely oppose the other portions, like the individual mandate, that are self-evidently necessary to make the pre-existing condition provision workable. So basically, the Republicans don’t support the old, pre-ObamaCare status quo; instead, they support a “solution” that will either cause rates to skyrocket (even more than they already are) or cause the private health insurance industry to go bankrupt!
But they’re the ones we should be trusting with our nation’s fiscal health. Riiiiight.
Actually, though, I’m not being fair… or perhaps I’m being too fair. The Republicans don’t support repealing ObamaCare at all. They support engaging in transparent political grandstanding about the repeal of ObamaCare. They know it can’t possibly be repealed before 2013 at the earliest, so this grandstanding is totally cost-free for the moment. They can promise to “repeal” it, and even hold a sham symbolic vote in which it’s “repealed”! And then Obama can veto the repeal bill, and save the GOP the trouble of crafting a workable alternative policy. The Republicans will figure out in 2013, if they have to, what actual policy solution they intend to put forward. Or, more likely, they’ll find some new way to punt the issue further down the road, ideally until some future Democratic administration has to clean up the mess (sound familiar?) and the Republicans can once again call their pragmatic compromise solutions “socialist,” demagogue the issue to death, return to power on the basis of half-truths and quasi-arguments, and we start the whole shambolic dance all over again. In the mean time, for present purposes, the Republicans are perfectly safe taking a politically popular, happy-sounding psuedo-position (Repeal ObamaCare, Except All The Good Parts!) that lacks any practical coherence whatsoever, as the public is too dumb, the media too lazy, and the Tea Party too blind to point any of this out. YAY! VOTE GOP! PALIN-BECK ’12!
Brendan, your last paragraph sounds eerily like the Democrats’ campaign logic on Iraq from 2004 to 2008. I guess the Republicans were smart enough to learn from their opponents.