You know it says something about the pathetic nature of Republican capacity for legislating, that for 10 years of running against something, their best strategy for repeal and replace is to pass a bill that repeals the bill at a set date in the future and gives congress two years to "come up with a replacement".
In that sense, John McCain did save the GOP because imagine selling that to voters. "I voted to abolish your pre-existing conditions on the faith that Congress will pass a bill to protect them later". WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS WOULD TRUST CONGRESS TO DO THAT?
Remember the Sequester was never suppose to happen. The threat of defense cuts were suppose to be so scary that people would come together and make a real deal to cut the deficit. Never happened and the sequester triggered.
The idea that congress would come together and find a replacement that even just all Republicans could agree on is laughable. Half of the Republicans, including the Freedom caucus don't want to do anything on health care at all. For a large portion of other Republicans all they want to do is give out some tax credits.
They don't understand that health care is different from other other goods and services. That delayed access means greater expense and thus cutting costs in the short term means higher expenses for Medicare later on down the road. They don't understand that cutting of coverage means, rural hospitals shut down which lowers access to supply and create shortages (and yes waiting lines that are so often threatened in regards to single payer), and thus be extension raises costs for everyone else and raises the cost of Medicare and Medicaid.
Health care policy is being driven by special interests and by political advantage. "OMG we have to pass something else we will have broken our promises" "OMG anything that doesn't gut gov't spending on health care is breaking our promises". Ronald Reagan once said and I paraphrase, "I instituted a policy as Governor and I continue it in this office (President), whereby we never discuss the political implications of any decision, we only discuss the good and bad and proceed with the policy that is best for the American People".
House Republicans lost because have long since squandered any ability to legislate. They couldn't differentiate themselves from Trump because the canard that House Republicans are peddling is the same think thank dog feces that people in even the Republican primary rejected to nominate Trump over Cruz in the first place. It is also the same stuff that is becoming increasing unwanted in its former solid bastions, suburban America, where new voters and younger voters are becoming more and more numerous and they are outvoting the Boomers. They want free college instead of tax cuts, they want free health care instead of deregulation.
If Democrats succeed in getting Medicare for all, it will because of lazy, brain-dead Republican lemmings who like robots are programmed to go up to capital hill, spout the talking points hold the line, knife any dissent in the back as a traitor and advance the agenda of the Koch brothers and other billionaire special interests. This is not conservatism, by any reasonable definition of the word. It is insanity, it is corruption and it is destroying both the Republican Party and the strength of conservatism.
It used to be that 45% of Americans identified as Conservatives, now that is down to 35%. That is not because Conservatives didn't turnout out or some other obfuscating misdirection, it is because conservatism has been hijacked and destroyed from within by the toxic combination of an inflexible agenda backed by big money, and a puritanical crusade to root out and destroy any all dissent from that line.
