Wonkbook: "This is what the Republicans were afraid of" Re ACA

[TomCADem]

I guess Republicans are hoping that Democrats cave and agree to cancel health insurance subsidies on all the folks who eagerly signed up for the ACA on the very first day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/02/wonkbook-this-is-what-the-republicans-were-afraid-of/

The top story all day was that Republicans had shut down the federal government because President Obama wouldn't defund or delay the Affordable Care Act. The other major story was that the government's servers were crashing because so many people were trying to see if they could get insurance through Obamacare.

So on the one hand, Washington was shut down because Republicans don't want Obamacare. On the other hand, Obamacare was nearly shut down because so many Americans wanted Obamacare.

The coming days will be a major test of the IT infrastructure supporting the Affordable Care Act. The online marketplaces were flooded with eager applicants on Tuesday -- a rush that far exceeded the expectations of marketplace directors. Reuters estimates that they got more than 10 million visits. But many of those applicants faced slow pages and error messages. Some waited hours to sign up for Obamacare. Others resolved to come back later.

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This is, of course, precisely what Republicans were scared of: That a law they loathe would end up being enthusiastically embraced by millions of Americans -- and thus proving permanent. It's Obamacare's possible success, not its promised failures, that unnerve the GOP.[/blockquote]

[unblock]

1. but why, then would they want to be seen as mortal enemies of it?

are they that stupid and short-sighted? it should be basic for anyone with a sense of political survival -- if you see a popular program steamrolling through, get your name on it or behind it, not standing in its path!

if aca is as popular as they seem to fear, they'll pay a far larger price for their all-in long-odds post-passage opposition to it than they would have for merely having voted against it.

had they simply said, we didn't think it was a good idea, but we the American people have spoken and now we'll do everything we can to make this program work for america, then it helps obama a bit, but he's quickly out of the picture (he's technically a lame duck already) and it makes the program "bipartisan", going a long way to denying other democrats any long-term win.

all they did is through good money after bad in terms of bad political investments.