Pirate's Cove

CNN thinks they’re on to something, and they might well be

As repeal and replace falters, more say GOP should abandon repeal plan

A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds a growing share of Americans want to see the GOP abandon its effort to repeal and replace the 2010 health care law known as Obamacare, as majorities across party lines want congressional Republicans to aim for a bill with bipartisan support.

Overall, 35% in the poll say they’d like President Donald Trump and the Republicans in Congress to give up their plans for repealing and replacing Obamacare, up from 23% who said the same in a March survey.

A majority still favor some form of repeal (34% would prefer repeal with replacement at the same time, and 18% favor repeal regardless of whether the law is replaced at the same time). The share in favor of repeal without replacement has held roughly steady since March; it remains the least popular option.

But public preferences are shifting away from repealing the law and enacting replacements concurrently (down from 59% in March), and more now say they’re unsure how they want Republican leaders to proceed (13% say so in the new poll).

Increases in support for abandoning repeal have come largely among groups that aren’t central to the GOP’s base: Younger adults, non-whites and those with lower incomes have become notably more supportive of leaving the ACA as is.

If you’re Apple, to you really worry about non-Apple users yammering on in polls about your product? For the most part, no. But, might you not want to entice them to purchase and obtain your product? That’s the same thing here: many in those groups might not be central to the GOP, but, they need to get those people to believe in repeal and replace. And so far, the GOP has done a terrible job with their idiotic plans, which never actually repealed and replaced.

The poll also finds that with several failed efforts at repealing and replacing the bill in the rear view mirror, about half think it’s likely the President and Republicans in Congress will ultimately be able to reach a deal to repeal and replace Obamacare. That’s down from 58% who felt it was likely in an April CNN/ORC survey, but remains above the share who say it’s unlikely the ACA will be repealed and replaced (41%).

That’s because the fools did foolish things. Seven years of complaining about Obamacare and we ended up with two terrible non-repeal/replace bills.

Republicans themselves remain optimistic that their party’s leaders in the White House and Congress will be able to come together to achieve this long-standing goal, 78% say it’s very or somewhat likely to happen, but less than half of independents or Democrats agree.

That’s a pretty high number. Count me in the 22% who think it won’t happen. They can’t even get a clean repeal.

Overall, this should have been expected. The time to kill Obamacare was the 2012 election. With a President Romney, he could have slowed or even stopped the implementation of Obamacare, even without control of the Senate. All the rules and regulations could have been spiked. Once it was implemented, though, getting rid of it would be damned difficult. How many Big Big Big Government programs have been killed off? A handful at best? Instead, most become institutionalized, and, even when they are failing, even with miserable performance, they still stick around.