I suppose the most striking aspect of this morning’s ACA theater was the Republicans’ explicit acceptance of the premise that sanctioned passage of the ACA in the first place — that all Americans should have affordable health care, and it’s the business of government to intervene and make it so. Once that is universally accepted, attention necessarily turns toward how, rather than whether.
Obama and the Democrats have plainly won the premise, and won it decisively. If the Republicans had possessed the decency to cooperate and help sand-off the rough edges, the entire subject would have been ancient history years ago.
But, you know … a nigra moozlim!!, in OUR WHITE HOUSE!!
My best guess is that the Republicans will pass a bill that specifies some sort of repeal years from now, congratulate themselves, and then go to work doing what they should have cooperated to do years ago — fine-tune what is in place. This will be done to the accompaniment of cheering morons with the memory of puppies.
Kellyanne Conway, painfully smug liar-for-hire, will nod her head approvingly and remind everybody that orange is the new black. So there.
The really interesting question is this: Can The Donald stay in office for 4-years? His dishonesty has always been egregious, but now his sympathy for Putin, and contempt for our intelligence services, ought to have triggered the air raid klaxon.
The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 4, 2017
The intelligence agencies unanimously deny that his briefing has been rescheduled. I believe them. And by the way, wasn’t today the deadline for Trump’s big reveal of his information that nobody else has about the hacking? I guess that has to be pushed back, too.
What plausible explanation could there be for Trump’s denial of Russia’s apparent presumption upon our sovereignty? The only one that I find very persuasive is that Trump knew long before Election Day that Russia was involved and collaborated with it — and benefited. Now, he proposes to do as he did in the matter of his tax returns (and so much else): deny-disparage-distract until it goes away. It won’t.