Have you wondered why Republicans, who fought Obamacare for seven years, are having trouble repealing and replacing Obamacare?
This amazing political phenomenon has several explanations.
One explanation comes from an article by Amanda Marcotte in the July 22, 2017, “Salon” called, “Democrats are still chasing rural white voters, and it’s a strategy doomed to fail.”
“The problem for Republicans with Obamacare wasn’t that it offended some sense of fiscal conservatism,” she wrote. “It’s that it was President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, and many white conservatives hated Obama because — simply by being black and intelligent and urbane and a Democrat — reminded them of the declining cultural dominance of conservative Christian whites like themselves.”
The idea for Obamacare actually originated from Mitt Romney, while he was governor of Massachusetts and a Republican. Based on this information alone, Marcotte’s position makes a lot of sense.
Ever since the change in the immigration law of 1965, this country has been experiencing a cultural, religious, racial and ethnic transformation. Whites are moving toward becoming a minority and they don’t like the loss of power.
Marcotte goes on: “Electing Trump has allowed this group of voters to believe they are culturally ascendant again — and repealing Obamacare, which was always mostly about sticking it to the liberals, has lost much of its salience as an issue.”
Obama’s term is done. Republicans should be dominating the government. Passing legislation ending Obamacare should be easy, right? No.
A second reason is that Republican conservatism is suffering from a major identity crisis. Just what is a conservative? Is he/she a member of the Tea Party, a Rand Paul libertarian or a moderate like Sen. Heller of Nevada or Sen. Murkowski of Alaska?
Until this issue is decided, there will be no success in passing legislation in Congress.
A third reason for current Republican frustration over Obamacare can be found in an ancient Hebrew proverb (Proverbs 26:27) in “The New Living Translation” that says, “If you set a trap for others, you will get caught in it yourself. If you roll a boulder down on others, it will crush you instead.”
Since the beginning of Barack Obama’s first term in 2009, Republicans worked diligently and single-mindedly to thwart every program originated by the president. Now, seven years later, Republicans are faced with a very unpopular decision to repeal and replace Obamacare. The problem they face is that they have not been able to come up with a new, better program in the six months since they took control of Congress. If the Republicans hated Obamacare so much, they should have faced reality seven years ago and come up with a way to fix its obvious problems and weaknesses by working with the Democrats.
Instead of becoming the “Party of No,” they should have come up with a better alternative to offer the American people.
It’s likely that Republicans will have to work with the Democrats to fix Obamacare to save their jobs in the 2018 elections. Republicans have fallen into a pit they dug for Obama. The boulder they rolled down on Obama is in the process of crushing them.
The problem with the Democrats, though, is they have taken on the Republican role as spoilers. They’re now the ones actively digging a pit and rolling rocks on the heads of President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress. When I watch CNN, I feel like I’m watching a liberal Fox News. It’s mainly all rants against President Trump. Roles have been reversed.
My concern is that our representatives, both Republican and Democrat, are acting like spoiled, cranky children, to the detriment of the common good of the nation. This immature behavior has to stop, but how can we turn it around? Who will lead us with maturity? Help will certainly not come from our president, who has been acting like a 5-year-old in a 71-year-old body, unable to control his tweets or end the chaos of his administration.
