Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) on Tuesday admitted that the Republican’s eight year-long pledge to fully “repeal and replace Obamacare” was “a pipe dream from the very start.”

Mark Sanford not optimistic on OCare repeal, tells me that "full repeal was, in essence, a pipe dream from the very start." — Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) May 2, 2017

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Sanford made the remark amid an ongoing debate among Republicans in the House over a new GOP healthcare plan. Sanford is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a hyper-conservative group largely blamed for derailing the party’s first attempt at repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act.

“You can’t have revolutionary change and have a system of checks and balances, the two are mutually exclusive,” Stanford said, Vice News’ Alexandra Jaffe reports. “And so when they talk about ‘full repeal’—that doesn’t fit with the nature of our political system, unless you were to get a bunch of Democrat votes on board which wasn’t going to happen.”

Democrats’ have on whole refused to consider bills that would gut Barack Obama’s signature healthcare laws, though most party leaders have acknowledges major flaws with the ACA, and offered to work with Republicans to find solutions for the bill’s problems.

As Politico’s Jake Sherman points out, Sanford’s acknowledgment means Republicans campaigned for eight years on a “pipe dream” platform.

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