The repugican Plan To Shutdown the Government To Defund Obamacare is Already Backfiring

Lunatic Fringe

The big repugican plan to shutdown the government unless Obamacare is defunded is already backfiring and setting up the repugican cabal for complete failure in 2014.
Ramesh Ponnuru of Bloomberg warned repugicans to drop their plan to defund Obamacare by shutting down the government, “Wingnuts on Capitol Hill think they have a chance to strike a mortal blow against President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul this fall. If their plan goes forward, however, it will backfire. The plan is to oppose any bill to fund the government or increase the debt limit that also provides money for putting the health-care law in place. Because repugicans control the House, Democrats can’t continue borrowing or paying for government operations without repugican support. So, wingnuts say, repugicans should insist on defunding Obamacare as the price of that support.”
Ponnuru is also a senior editor at the National Review, who wants Obamacare gone, but he can see the political disaster that the plan to oppose all funding bills unless the ACA is defunded would bring on to the repugican cabal. This move would backfire on Republicans because the public would side with Obama and the Democrats. They would definitely blame the party that has spent nearly every second of the past two years obstructing everything, and the biggest reason of all that this would fail is that wingnuts and repugicans have overestimated the popular appeal of repealing Obamacare.
The repugicans see poll numbers that suggest that the country supports repealing the ACA, and assume that this should be their number one issue. Their problem is that repealing Obamacare isn’t the issue that people care most about. Since the economic collapse of 2008, the issues that has mattered most in every poll where they was asked about have been jobs and the economy.
In a recent National Journal poll, healthcare reform was listed as the third most important issue in the 2014 elections behind the economy and social issues (same sex marriage, abortion, etc.) Only 4% of Democrats said that it was the most important issue, compared to 20% of repugicans. It is clear that the repugican plan to shut down the government or cause a federal default unless Obamacare is defunded is more repugican preaching to the choir.
If repugicans go down this path, it will be a complete and utter disaster for them. They will have shutdown the government over an issue that isn’t a top priority for the American people. It seems like the only people who sit around worrying about Obamacare everyday are House repugicans and Faux News watchers. As long as repugicans keep ignoring the economy, Democrats win.
The rest of the country wants repugicans to work with Obama to improve the economy. The repugicans will not only be blamed for shutting down the government, but they will have shutdown the government and hurt millions of people over an issue that is only a top priority for their base.
This last gasp strategy of shutting down the government to stop the ACA is already dividing repugicans. There are many who are warning their cabal not to do this. Sen. Richard Burr (a repugican) called Sen. Mike Lee’s (r-UT) plan to shutdown the government unless Obamacare is defunded the dumbest idea that he has ever heard for a reason. It is an idea that is completely destined to fail.
The politics of this are bad. The fallout from following through on this would be worse, and it looks like House repugicans have found a new way to cost their cabal the 2014 election.