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Republicans are not only shocked after President Obama took the air out of their balloon, but has left John Boehner swinging blindly at the air with his big 2014 issue gone.

After the White House announced that they were delaying the employer mandate until 2015, Speaker Boehner could only say, “The president’s health care law is already raising costs and costing jobs. This announcement means even the Obama administration knows the ‘train wreck’ will only get worse. I hope the administration recognizes the need to release American families from the mandates of this law as well. This is a clear acknowledgment that the law is unworkable, and it underscores the need to repeal the law and replace it with effective, patient-centered reforms.”

What is this replacement plan that Boehner was speaking of? None of the previous nearly 40 attempts to repeal Obamacare contained a replacement plan. Last year, Republicans admitted that they had no plan to replace Obamacare. Their plan is, was, and always has been to repeal Obamacare. There is no plan to replace anything. Boehner’s desperation after losing the main issue that Republicans were hoping to campaign on is so complete that he has retreated back to their 2010 campaign slogan of repeal and replace.

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The fact that Republicans keep claiming that they will replace Obamacare undercuts their argument that the healthcare reform is so unpopular that it should just be done away with. If the law is really that unpopular, why are Republicans pretending to replace it? The answer is that the American people support healthcare reform.

The media always parrots the Republican talking point that Obamacare is unpopular. but something totally different happens when people are polled about the individual parts of the healthcare law. It turns out that people like what Obamacare does. What they don’t like is the term Obamacare. Republicans have successfully turned Obamacare into a bad word, but people really like the idea of healthcare reform. That’s why John Boehner has to talk about repeal and replace instead of just repeal.

Obama’s shocker has left Boehner with even less than the usual nothing that he has to pretend like is the House Republican agenda. House Republicans were all set to demonize Obamacare as big job killing tax on employers, but that’s all gone now. Republicans are going to campaign on scaring voters about Obamacare. The problem is that they’ve been making this same argument since 2009. The American people tuned it out in 2012, and there is no evidence to suggest that it will be any more successful in 2014, 2016, or 2020.

John Boehner’s got nothing, and once again, President Obama has demonstrated how he keeps beating Republicans at every turn.