(The Washington Post) — “There are two big differences between the Democrats leveraging net neutrality and the Republican effort on Obamacare.”
There were a lot of rational reasons that Republicans kept a laserlike focus on Obamacare from 2010 to 2016.
First and foremost, the word contained the five letters O-B-A-M-A, which, for the Republican base, was a guaranteed way of cracking open checkbooks and engaging activism. Second, the issue played to the broader fears of much of the base, this idea that the government under a Democratic president would seek to worm its way into the most personal, most important parts of your life. Third, it was an issue that would never be resolved as long as Barack Obama was president: Obama was no more likely to sign a bill eliminating Obamacare than President Trump would be to sign a bill banning presidential visits to privately-owned golf clubs.
It was, in other words, a wonderful political foil. Until 2017, when it wasn’t. Once Obama left office, so did the excuse for flailing hopelessly against repeal. Much of the year was spent trying to actually follow through on the promise of eliminating the law, and the year ended with a partial victory, at best.
Click to continue reading. By Philip Bump, Jan 16, 2018.