Sen. Richard Shelby

In their ongoing dance between electoral disaster and keeping the base happy, Senate Republicans are working really hard to justify their decision to give up on trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a decision that has their extreme base up in arms

The problem with repeal, they are now saying, is that it would put too many existing health programs in jeopardy. But that's all President Obama's fault, of course.



"The administration has used the Affordable Care Act's mandatory spending, which is not subject to a vote by Congress every year, to backfill key discretionary programs," [Sen. Richard] Shelby [R-AL] said in his opening remarks. "The administration then diverts discretionary dollars to fund new programs. When the Affordable Care Act is repealed, many important programs like Community Health Centers and the [federal] Immunization program at the Centers for Disease Control will be in jeopardy because their base funding … has been so significantly reduced."

It's not justification that is likely to sway anybody in the base, who don't think federal health programs should exist at all, but it's a game attempt by Shelby to help out leadership in finding a reason to break their repeal promise.

But that's going to be a big problem for congressional Republicans, since they're also abandoning their fight for "religious freedom." The tea partiers and evangelicals (read, base Republicans) aren't going to like that one bit. GOP leadership has blinked, twice. That's going to create problems with the crazy wing of the congressional caucus and with their voting base come November. Too bad.