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Ten years of using empty rhetoric about 'Obamacare' to rile up the rubes, and now the anti-ACA crusade ends not with a bang but with a whimper. Sure, the GOP will keep working behind the scenes to bring back pre-existing conditions, primarily by begging the courts to do it for them, but they won't talk about it anymore.
All that sabotage, all that pain inflicted on Americans in furtherance of a pointless anti-ACA obsession. All for nothing.
A Word Not Uttered by Republican Officials at the Convention: Obamacare
All that sabotage, all that pain inflicted on Americans in furtherance of a pointless anti-ACA obsession. All for nothing.
A Word Not Uttered by Republican Officials at the Convention: Obamacare
This week, Mr. Trump didn’t mention Obamacare at all in his convention speech. The word that rallied Republican voters for nearly a decade has barely been uttered. It came up precisely once during the convention, during a speech by Natalie Harp, a cancer survivor who is not an elected official.
In the 2012 and 2016 G.O.P. conventions, repealing Obamacare was a central, almost obligatory part of every political speech, a goal shared by every candidate, a priority of almost every Republican voter.
Republicans used the term Obamacare 23 times in 2012 and 13 times in 2016, during the prime-time evening hours (transcripts show no mentions of the Affordable Care Act at the 2012, 2016 or 2020 conventions). Speakers usually referred to it in calls for repeal. This year, there were no calls for repeal, just a claim from Ms. Harp that the Affordable Care Act caused expensive insurance premiums.
Republicans tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act after gaining control of the White House in 2017 (they already controlled the House and the Senate). Their proposed replacement bill was deeply unpopular. And they lost control of the House in 2018 after a campaign in which Democrats hammered their health care record.