Imagine the utter contempt that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) must hold for the American people.

“Again and again, Democrats have refused to join Republicans in guaranteeing coverage for pre-existing conditions,” Cornyn tweeted Monday morning. The tweet was in response to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stating it had been two years since Senate Democrats blocked President Donald Trump from repealing critical health care rules.

Again and again, Democrats have refused to join Republicans in guaranteeing coverage for pre-existing conditions https://t.co/W01rhZ9fyH — Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) July 29, 2019

In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — a law that, among other things, ensured that insurance companies can no longer discriminate against people with preexisting conditions.


Every single Senate Democrat voted for these protections for people with preexisting conditions. Every single Senate Republican opposed these protections.

Almost immediately after Obamacare became law, a bloc of almost entirely Republican state officials filed lawsuits seeking to take down the law. Cornyn did not simply support these lawsuits, he joined 35 of his fellow Senate Republicans on an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to repeal the law in its entirety.

Later, when another lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to distort the Affordable Care Act in a way that would throw many states’ individual insurance markets into chaos, Cornyn joined another group of Republican members of Congress in asking the justices to collapse many of the nation’s insurance markets.

Every single justice who voted in favor of these lawsuits was a Republican.

In Congress, Republicans made at least 70 attempts to repeal Obamacare. Most of these attempts targeted the law as a whole, leaving nothing for people with preexisting conditions. Other Republican health bills contained language that appears designed to give a casual reader the false impression that the bill would protect people with preexisting conditions, but that would enable insurers to charge such exorbitant prices to people with such conditions that the protections would amount to very little.


And on top of all of this, right now there’s a lawsuit pending that seeks to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act — including the protections for people with preexisting conditions. The suit was brought by a bloc of Republican state officials, and was embraced by a Republican trial judge. At oral arguments earlier this month, a pair of Republican appellate judges appeared likely to strike down the law.

There is no way to “#bothsides” this history: The Democratic Party spent the last decade enacting protections for people with preexisting conditions and then defending it against a multi-front partisan onslaught. The Republican Party led that onslaught.

Remember Cornyn’s tweet next time you hear a Republican politician rail against liberal elites who are supposedly condescending to salt-of-the-earth Americans in the heartland. Cornyn sent that tweet because he thinks you are stupid.