GOP -- the party of no escape

[marmar]

(Mother Jones) Has any piece of legislation in American history held on by its fingertips more dramatically than the Affordable Care Act? Let's review the tape.

In 2009, it passed in the Senate by a margin of zero votes. In 2010, thanks to some fancy parliamentary maneuvering, it survived the loss of the Democrats' filibuster-­proof majority after Sen. Ted Kennedy's death. In 2012, it squeaked through a Supreme Court challenge after Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly changed his vote at the last minute. It hung on again later that year when President Barack Obama won reelection. In 2013 came the disastrous rollout of its website, and in 2015, yet another unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge. And along the way it outlasted more than 50 attempts by congressional Republicans to repeal all or part of it.

For six years, Obamacare has been the ultimate Republican punching bag. It helped win the party a landslide victory in the 2010 midterms. Repealing it has consistently been an applause line for conservative politicians. And even now that it's up and running pretty successfully, poll after poll shows at least 40 percent of the public still disapproves of it.

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Every party faces conflict between its center and its base, but the emergence of the tea party and the Fox News echo chamber has put this dynamic on steroids. Moving even to the moderate right, let alone to the center, is all but impossible for the GOP. Its base demands not just a border fence, but the repeal of the 14th Amendment; not just opposition to gun control, but rejection of universal background checks, which even the National Rifle Association used to support; not just skepticism about climate change, but insistence that global warming is a grand hoax perpetrated by liberals to subvert the free market. This conflict between party and base entered uncharted territory earlier this month when Republicans literally couldn't find a single plausible candidate willing to be Speaker of the House. No one wanted to deal with the bomb-throwing antics of the reactionary wing of their own party. Even candidates who consider themselves tea partiers didn't think they could control a caucus dominated by tea partiers. Among Republicans, becoming Speaker is now considered a career death sentence. ...............(more)

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/no-escape-republicans-obamacare-speaker

[snagglepuss]

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