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"Then Republicans started lying about it..."
The latest Obamacare ruling is part of a larger conservative attack on democracy
“Populism” is not the problem (The Republican Party elite is the problem)
By Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasmatt@vox.com
https://www.vox.com/2018/12/15/18141768/obamacare-unconstitutional-democracy-misha-tseytlin
"Then Republicans started lying about it"
The idea of striking down a law in this way is almost comically undemocratic.
But the accountable, elected arms of the American political system do have easy ways to push back. For starters, the state attorneys-general who were pushing for this unpopular repeal scheme had to face the voters.
Josh Hawley, the attorney-general of Missouri, for example was in the midst of trying to get himself elected to the US Senate. His opponent, Claire McCaskill, quite naturally slammed him for his legal efforts to strip Missourians of key ACA regulatory protections — most of all the rules barring insurance companies from discriminating against patients with preexisting conditions. Hawley, however, cooked up an easy retort to this charge by running ads that lied about his position. He won.
Indeed, Republicans all up and down the country started misleading on this subject.
Which after all they had to do. Because even if for some narrow reason you buy Tseytlin’s legal argument, the “problem” had a super-easy legislative fix this whole time. Simply make the mandate formally repealed and/or make the clause severable from the rest of the legislation and the whole strategy collapses. No accidental repeal after all! But Republicans never acted on any such notion because they were hoping courts would throw the whole law out. And Republicans dealt with the unpopularity of that position by just lying to the voters about what they were doing. And while those lies weren’t enough to save the GOP House majority, Hawley did successfully lie his way into a Senate seat — as did Rick Scott and several other GOP challengers.
The idea of striking down a law in this way is almost comically undemocratic.
But the accountable, elected arms of the American political system do have easy ways to push back. For starters, the state attorneys-general who were pushing for this unpopular repeal scheme had to face the voters.
Josh Hawley, the attorney-general of Missouri, for example was in the midst of trying to get himself elected to the US Senate. His opponent, Claire McCaskill, quite naturally slammed him for his legal efforts to strip Missourians of key ACA regulatory protections — most of all the rules barring insurance companies from discriminating against patients with preexisting conditions. Hawley, however, cooked up an easy retort to this charge by running ads that lied about his position. He won.
Indeed, Republicans all up and down the country started misleading on this subject.
Which after all they had to do. Because even if for some narrow reason you buy Tseytlin’s legal argument, the “problem” had a super-easy legislative fix this whole time. Simply make the mandate formally repealed and/or make the clause severable from the rest of the legislation and the whole strategy collapses. No accidental repeal after all! But Republicans never acted on any such notion because they were hoping courts would throw the whole law out. And Republicans dealt with the unpopularity of that position by just lying to the voters about what they were doing. And while those lies weren’t enough to save the GOP House majority, Hawley did successfully lie his way into a Senate seat — as did Rick Scott and several other GOP challengers.
Scott Walker, the Republican governor who'd set this whole thing in motion, campaigned in 2018 by saying (falsely) that he supported preexisting conditions protections.
Unlike Hawley, he lost. So did other statewide GOP officials, including the state’s attorney general. And Democratic candidates for Wisconsin State Assembly won a majority of the votes. But thanks to gerrymandering, the GOP still held a majority of the seats. And then in his last act as governor, Walker signed a series of lame-duck bills reducing the power of newly elected Democratic Party statewide elected officials.
One of those bills makes it illegal for the new governor and new attorney general to withdraw the state from this ACA lawsuit. Hawley tricked people into believing he would defend preexisting conditions rules, and starting next month will use his authority as a US Senator to do the reverse. Walker failed to trick people, lost his race, and then used his lame duck powers to do the reverse of what he said.
The striking thing about all of this, however, is that it’s not just one oddball judge in Texas — it’s twenty Republican attorneys general. And it’s not just one GOP elected official misleading voters about their stance on preexisting conditions, it’s dozens. And it’s not just one embittered losing gubernatorial candidate pulling an undemocratic fast one during the lame duck session — it’s the near-unanimous decision of two different state legislative caucuses. This is, evidently, how the overlapping networks of donors, operatives, activists, and elected officials who comprise the GOP think the country should be run.
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