OPINION:
President Donald Trump wrote, in the aftermath of the failed Senate repeal of Obamacare, that the Republican-controlled Congress “let the American people down.”
That’s true. But in a much larger way than he meant, and on a much deeper scale.
Republicans may have tried to present as if they were fighting the good fight on Obamacare since 2010. But truly, they’ve been missing the mark, not just recently, but for years. Their whole messaging, in fact, has been one big sound, one rush of fury, all signifying nothing.
Why?
Republicans, with Obamacare repeal, had the chance to make a crucial case, to right an egregious wrong, to reverse course on a most damaging path that Barack Obama and his progressive pawns had set the country upon — the one that led to the belief that government-provided health care is an individual right.
It’s that mindset, that socialist mindset, that birthed Obamacare.
It’s that mindset, then, that Republicans should have been fighting all along. But they didn’t; they haven’t been. When’s the last time you heard a Republican actually talk about health care being a personal responsibility?
Right.
Obamacare talk on the Republican circuit has been all about reform, all about a suitable replacement, all about repairs and fixes.
Well, GOP, listen up: the socialism was the battle. The various legislative twistings and turnings through the years were simply skirmishes.
If only Republicans hadn’t been so quick to abandon the real war.
The truth is that in this country of limited government, of free market economy, of the Founding Fathers’ belief that rights come from God, not the state, health insurance is actually an individual choice, perhaps a personal responsibility, maybe a familial duty. But a right — akin to breathing?
A right — needful of government provision?
Never. Not in America. Not in a democratic republic built on capitalistic dreams.
This is the argument Republicans — right after they were handed the House, then the Senate, and finally, the White House — should have been making all along in regards to Obamacare. That should have been their core message to the American people, over and over and over again.
Instead, Republicans got pulled into the political weeds, pushed into bargaining and bartering over what never should have been government’s to bargain and barter in the first place.
So the Senate’s recent failure to repeal?
Sure, it’s disappointing. But truly, it’s not as disappointing — not as damaging to the fate of the republic — as the GOP’s years-long ceding of the war.
The bigger disappointment is that Republicans have so completely caved on principle and joined the Democrats in their socialist ways of thinking.
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