How did Republicans fail to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act?
They hated Obamacare but they never understood the Affordable Care Act.
It certainly (and this turned out to be very important) didn’t mean you had any ideas about what it did, how it worked or how many people were benefiting from it … or how to replace it.
— Obamacare created a new baseline.
— They don’t have a policy bench.
tend be much more skilled at campaigning .. than at the qualities that enable governing, like compromise and fact-based analysis.
— The one policy Republicans get is tax cuts, and little else motivates/interests them.
almost 50 percent of the cuts went to millionaire households. The 400 richest taxpayers, with average income above $300 million, would get a tax break averaging $7 million.
.. the extent of this Robin-Hood-in-reverse play was too much for moderate Republicans
— They’re ungovernable
John A. Boehner predicted what just happened a few weeks ago.
.. “In the 25 years I served in the United States Congress, Republicans never, ever, one time, agreed on what a health-care proposal should look like. Not once.”
.. People are learning his “art-of-the-deal” shtick, so they know that what he says Monday may well be totally different from where he is Tuesday.
.. Newt Gingrich, of all people, was compelled to tweet out the following: “Why would you schedule a vote on a bill that is at 17 percent approval? Have we forgotten everything Reagan taught us?”