Are Republicans Finally Wising Up?

After the failed frenzy engineered last week by Republican leaders to take away access to affordable health care from tens of millions of American men, women and children, Republican members of Congress finally may be starting to claw their way out of the deep hole they’ve been digging for themselves ever since their poisonous 2009-2010 battle against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. the ACA, a.k.a. Obamacare.

On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Patty Murray of Washington state, announced plans for hearings in September that are aimed at repairing a flaw in the language of the ACA that would shore up a financial vulnerability spot in the program.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a bill he strongly opposed that toughens sanctions against Russia for interfering in last year’s presidential election. Although Trump has dismissed U.S. intelligence community findings confirming the interference — he has called the charge a hoax — the Republican-led House and Senate passed the legislation by veto-proof majorities, leaving him no choice but to sign it.

If Republicans can continue shifting away from extreme ideology and party power games and refocus on real-world policy, practices and governance that have direct consequences on the daily lives of real people and families, they might actually climb back to the surface and find maneuvering room within their significant differences with Democrats and get some things done.

Shameful Rhetoric

It’s been a long seven years. Republicans originally fought the Obamacare proposal with shameful scare rhetoric about "losing our freedom" and fallacious smear-and-fear tactics ("death panels"). That left them boxed in when the ACA passed the House and Senate and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010.

The bill passed with Democratic votes only, but at least it occurred after an extensive process that lasted more than a year and included many public hearings with witnesses who supported and opposed different ideas and approaches, wide-ranging debate and scores of amendments offered by Republicans. No such process accompanied the recent legislative hairballs coughed up by the Republican leadership for consideration in the House and Senate.

The final ACA bill was by no means perfect, but rather than try to address the imperfections in the wake of its enactment, Republican leadership smelled potential electoral leverage and committed their members to fight to the program’s death. With the Obamacare system still in the building phase and Democrats hopelessly pathetic at explaining and defending it, Republicans kept up their fear mongering and made significant gains in subsequent election cycles, even as Obama was re-elected in 2012.

The Obama administration didn’t help its cause with an initially botched rollout of the ACA website, but things started to shift after the online system was reprogrammed to work smoothly in late 2013 and early 2014. Americans finally could experience and judge for themselves whether the new system provided clear, hype-free information about the different health insurance packages they were eligible for from private insurance companies, including easily compared costs and benefits.

Overall, it turned out, the law worked comparatively well, considering its epic proportions, and tens of millions of previously uninsured Americans — including sick folks that insurance companies had no interest in whatsoever and people who simply couldn’t afford coverage — found out that they liked being able to get health care when they needed it for themselves and their families.

Public Attitudes Start Shifting

Republican leadership, such as it is, missed or ignored the early signs of changing public attitudes toward Obamacare, and, reassured by their election victories, kept up their attacks and their efforts to kill the program or at least cripple it. These continued through the insanity of the endless 2016 presidential campaign and the early months of the equally insane Trump administration.

What mainly has stood in the way of working with opposition Democrats to devise a few fixes for some of Obamacare’s imperfections and ease the fears about costs that unsettle families and health insurance markets alike are the fears of the Republicans themselves. In other words, the American people, especially working Americans with low-income and lower-middle-income jobs, face profound uncertainties about their families' security because Republican members of Congress have been trapped in the deep Obamacare hole they started digging for themselves in 2010. And instead of leading their members through the chaos and confusion to collaborative solutions for the American people, the Republican leadership has done all it could to stoke the threats that got people so worried in the first place.

To get out of this mess, Republicans need a clear eye, a clear head and courage to challenge authority in favor of the commitment they've made to serve the needs of their constituents. Three senators — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and, most dramatically, John McCain of Arizona — demonstrated that kind of independence when they stood together with all the Senate’s Democrats in voting down the final kill-Obamacare effort by the Republican leadership last week. Tennessee’s Alexander has started down that path. And Republicans and Democrats in the House, working through what they’ve dubbed the Problem Solvers Conference, seem headed in that direction, too.

Ignore That Bizarre Humanoid

Arguably the first and most important single thing Republicans can do to get out of their hole is start ignoring the bizarre humanoid currently appearing in the role of president of the United States. Standing at the edge of the hole, far above the Republicans trying to scramble up and out, Donald Trump has tossed down more shovels and Twitter-screamed the equivalent of KEEP DIGGING, YOU LOSERS! And every now and then, to make their lives more miserable, he’s had one of his cheap flunkies dump a load of garbage into the hole and onto their heads. Last week, a fetid, foul-mouthed personnel shuffle that had nothing to do with health care served the purpose.

Trump has given no indication that he knows or cares what's been in any of the Republican health care proposals rejected by the Senate last week. He seems similarly devoid of interest about what might or should be in a future bill, even though he keeps haranguing Republicans to come up with one.

It doesn't matter. He would welcome any anti-Obamacare bill Republicans could put on his desk. He would sign it, call it beautiful and take full credit for it, even if it made life worse for millions of people who voted for him and millions of others who didn't. And he would declare it a tremendous victory for America, by which he would mean a tremendous victory for him.

Republicans, stop digging. Trump is not on your side. He's on his side.

Enough With “The Promise” Already

Another obstacle to Republicans getting out of their hole is the unhelpful reminders from Republican leaders of the "promise" Republicans have made to voters since 2010: They will wipe out every trace of Obamacare as soon as possible. With Republicans already controlling both houses of Congress, the death of Obamacare finally became theoretically possible with Trump's inauguration on January 20.

The "promise" is an intimidation ploy. Party leaders say the promise got Republicans elected, and "breaking" the promise would get them un-elected next time around. Trump explicitly threatened last week that Republicans who believe otherwise on this issue could find themselves facing a well-financed Republican challenger in a primary.

Enough is enough. Barack Obama signed the ACA into law on March 23, 2010. That was more than seven years ago. In 21st-century political terms, it might as well have been the Paleozoic Era.

Republicans' release from the outdated "promise" comes via two words: Things change.

That's been the approach taken by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski in defying Republican leaders with her vote last week and similarly defying Trump's ham-handed bullying, which threatened her with the loss of Interior Department dollars for needed projects in Alaska.

As the chair of the Senate committee overseeing Interior’s budget, Murkowski wasn’t impressed by the threat and stood firm. Circumstances in Alaska had changed since 2014, she pointed out. It was the year Obamacare coverage itself — as opposed to inflammatory and deceptive Republican rhetoric about Obamacare — first became available to the general public.

And who would have predicted that Americans and their families would feel positively about subsidized premium rates, a requirement that insurance companies accept people with preexisting conditions without jacking up rates, required minimum packages of benefits, the extension to age 26 of children's coverage under parents' policies, the elimination of lifetime coverage limits and certain co-pays, minimum percentages of premiums that insurance companies must spend on benefits and much more.

Disregarding all that, the Trump administration is continuing its campaign of attempted sabotage of Obamacare as if it were 2010, pretending that the law is "imploding" because of its flaws when, in fact, it's Trump's thumb pressing the detonator on the explosives.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress can stop him and preserve the many Obamacare provisions that benefit the American people while fixing its problem areas. But Republicans first have to escape from their hole.

Some of them have started climbing.

A version of this column originally was published by the St. Louis Jewish Light.