The current "thought" rattling around inside the empty head of Putin's useful idiot (and all- around idiot)
Donald "Not Exonerated" Trump is that he now has "political capital" to spend after "Coverup General" Barr wrote his whitewash letter on the Mueller report.
As we noted yesterday, he immediately took his presumed "political capital" and handed it right back to Democrats by supporting the striking down of the Affordable Care Act, which would kill affordable health insurance for nearly 30 million Americans.
His rotted out Republican Party thought they had a powerful message going into the 2020 election: "Those socialist Democrats want pie- in- the- sky single- payer health insurance and we reasonable Republicans will just tinker around the edges to make the system better! Freedumb!" Now, thanks to their Very Stable Genius' decision to support striking down the ACA
in toto, their party has been lashed to the gunwales of the S.S.
Titanic Trump. Gone would be coverage for pre- existing conditions; gone would be Medicaid expansion; gone would be subsidies for premiums and deductibles; gone would be the safety net for nearly 30 million Americans who've come to enjoy such life- saving benefits over time. Also gone? Future health care savings from a system that delivered
$2.3 trillion in reduced health care spending from 2010 to 2017.
The panic level for Republicans who already know what Dimbulb Donnie apparently doesn't -- that Democrats ran on protecting health care in 2018 and won big -- is sure to increase as polling continues to show that Americans don't want Republicans messing around with their health insurance.
Here's yesterday's Quinnipiac poll:
American voters say 55 - 32 percent they would prefer to improve rather than replace the
health care system in the U.S. No listed group prefers replacing the health care system.
(Single- payer has strong support (43%), but still isn't the majority opinion.)
So, the Very Stable Genius has, once again, wrong- footed the message his bad faith party wanted to ride into 2020, and (
schadenfreude alert)
it's causing alarm in the ranks of the sociopaths:
Over the past 24 hours, Republican officials have watched in horror as
the Trump administration once again fully embraced the repeal of
Obamacare, just over a year after the issue proved toxic for the party
at the ballot box. [snip]
GOP officials couldn’t help but marvel at Trump’s inability to enjoy a
rare grace period. “They are completely tone deaf,” texted one of the
party’s top strategists. “How bout a few more victory laps on Mueller
while you can get away with it? WTF is wrong with them?”
But
seasoned Trump hands were hardly surprised at the rake Trump had placed
his foot on. “And there’s something unusual about him stepping on a good
message?” one former administration official said, laughing when asked
about the timing of the announcement. [snip]
As such, the department’s new position set off alarm bells among
Republicans who had spent much of the 2018 election cycle trying to
alleviate voter concerns that their attempts at health care overhaul
would—contrary to the likely outcomes—leave those with preexisting
conditions vulnerable to the whims of private insurers. Fergus Cullen,
the former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee and a
critic of the party’s approach to Obamacare repeal, compared the
rejoining of the debate to the famous battle-of-wits scene in The Princess Bride.
“The one,” Cullen stressed, “where he talks about the rules that you should never get into a land war in Asia.”
Meanwhile, rational people (a.k.a., the Democratic Party)
will be working to strengthen the ACA, providing a sharp contrast to the sabotaging efforts of Republicans over the past few years. Until we get a new Senate and a Democratic President, though, the ACA remains in peril and improvements such as single- payer remain a goal to be fought for.
BONUS: An "anonymous Republican Senator" (stay spineless!)
wants nothing to do with Trump's latest genius move. Too late, jackass! You own this.
BONUS II: Oops. Now it's the top Republican in the House
telling Trump to back off. You can almost smell the panic.
