- “That’s not gonna happen,” Kasich told The Associated Press during a recent re-election campaign swing. “The opposition to it was really either political or ideological,” the Republican governor added. “I don’t think that holds water against real flesh and blood, and real improvements in people’s lives.”
"About-face!"
- “I support covering a population of people who are drug-addicted and mentally ill. I support eliminating preexisting conditions,” said Kasich. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with my feeling and support to the ACA.”
I want to know what "the bad parts" are. We keep hearing about them, but they are never named. Of course there are some major headaches for hospitals and doctors on the provider end, but I can't imagine that's what they're constantly referring to, as those are highly technical issues. I wish the media would quit framing the debate in those terms. It doesn't take editorializing to just say a politician is full of shit, if it's simply a fact-based assessment. I hope you heard McConnell going on about how he'll keep the ACA mandated website in Kentucky open, but repeal the law itself. It was a serious exercise in congnitive dissonance.
It's actually very simple: Obama is black. Now, they'll deny up and down that this is about pandering to barely-latent racism. This is how you get air time. The ACA was a boil-down of President Nixon's ideas on health care. That's how radical it wasn't: it was a Republican idea that should've gotten squeezed in with the EPA. However the black President got it passed, so it's evil.
It's not as simple as racism. Racism is just a convenient thing for democrats to say to counter. If it were racism alone, then Clinton wouldn't have faced the opposition he did back in the 90s. Hell, Johnson couldn't get a national healthcare initiative through Congress, and he was known as a bully. Racism can't account for those attempts, so why is it a sufficient explanation now? Haven't ever gotten an adequate explanation for that one.
Don't assume this has been the same Sisyphean struggle for each Democrat president. LBJ used up everything when he forced fellow Southerners to accept the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Medicare in 1965. He called in every favor, knew where all the bodies are buried, and gave them a freebie afterward with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Clinton was new to the place in 1993 and didn't present the problem correctly. It was over when they demonstrated a national health card. Obama couldn't get a war resolution passed by war hawks. He can only get grief from red states. Let's look at that map... hmmm, lots Southern red states.