Repeal Obamacare? Once GOP dogma, it's now the party's albatross
Contempt for the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — was so central to Sen. Joni Ernst’s 2014 election campaign that the Iowa Republican, in a TV ad promising she’d “unload” on the law, pulled out a handgun and fired repeatedly. “Give me a shot,” she asked voters.
Six years later, the first-term senator is battling for reelection, and she’s holstered her gun.
Ernst is not alone. Earlier this month, she joined fellow Republican Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — two other would-be assassins of the 10-year-old healthcare law who are now fighting for their political survival — in breaking with their party to support Obamacare on the Senate floor. They voted with Democrats on a measure opposing a Republican-backed case against the law that’s now before the Supreme Court.
As that vote showed, endangered Republicans are frantically trying to pivot away from the “repeal Obamacare” slogans that served them well for much of the last decade. Those are now a liability amid a jump in public support for the healthcare law.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-15/democrats-once-ran-from-obamacare-now-theyre-running-on-it