In the seven years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (which, by the way, was passed seven years ago this week), the Republican Party made it its life mission to repeal a piece of legislation that while flawed in some aspects succeeded over time in remedying many of the problems which beset the delivery of health care in this country. So intent was the GOP on repealing the law which they derogatorily referred to as Obamacare that they voted no less than 52 times to do so and in the process failed miserably to conduct the people's business. Though the effort began well before the passage of the ACA, the Republican Party and its patrons -- the Koch Brothers and similarly ideological entities -- spent tens of millions of dollars to rig the electoral process by pushing through voter suppression legislation at the local level and gerrymandering voting districts throughout the country to ensure that Republican candidates would either prevail in the first instance or run for re-election virtually certain of winning, all to increase their numbers in the House of Representatives and all with an eye on implementing an agenda which held out the repeal of the Affordable Care Act as its top priority. Consequently though not exclusively because of that effort, Republicans took control of both the House and the Senate during the mid-term elections in 2010 and have held fast to their majority every since.
Fast forward to 2017. In control of both Houses of Congress due, in large part, to dark money pouring into the electoral process and now in control of a White House by means which have raised considerable suspicion of a "fix" and hints of criminal conduct, the Republican Party was poised to realize their highest priority. Yet even with so much muscle poised to be flexed, even that amount of leverage was not enough for a party that has shown a willingness to bend and break the rules to gain the upper hand. So, in a final act to game the system and ensure passage of its response to the ACA, the Republican Party resorted to parliamentary gamesmanship to ensure that whatever was put forth in the name of repealing the ACA required only a simple majority to pass rather than requiring a veto-proof majority which is typically the case with legislation, doing so by attaching whatever they produced to a budget reconciliation bill that required but a simple majority to pass.
And with all that...with seven years of opportunity to offer a law that, at least in their view, corrected the flaws in the ACA, with an unrelenting campaign to rig the electoral process to ensure the election of Republican candidates and suppress non-Republican votes, with studied ignorance of the unethical and almost certainly criminal conduct which put Donald Trump in the White House and with one last piece of gamesmanship intended to guarantee a victory...with all that the Republican Party failed miserably to achieve the one goal that have had FOR SEVEN YEARS. Trump Et al were quick to blame the GOP's abject failure on the Democrats...a not surprising but absolutely ludicrous claim given that the GOP controls the entire government and simply needed one vote over the minimum to secure a majority but could not muster enough votes from its own party to carry the day.
Certainly the American people are the winners this evening though frankly for millions of people the impact of the GOP failure today is more about surviving and being able to have access to medical care than about winning. Nevertheless, it is the American people who are the beneficiaries of an abject Republican failure to govern. This reprieve may very well be short-lived and people must remain vigilant and not succumb to the sense that they and we have moved past a terrible policy that may very well have wrecked havoc on tens of millions of lives. The forces which the GOP brought to bear, however, ill-fated for the moment, are certain to regroup and press forward with another effort at a so-called, "repeal and replace". Resistance was and must remain the watchword in response.
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