The GOP: Willing to risk your job and your retirement to make sure you don’t get health insurance.

First of all, let’s be honest about what the “Defund Obamacare” wing of the GOP is doing.

They lost the 2012 election, which was in large part part about Obamacare, and in protest of that election they’re threatening a depression if the man who won that election doesn’t repeal Obamacare.

The historical analogies to this are rare. The South seceded because they didn’t like the result of a presidential election in 1860. And Republicans threatened a depression in 2011 because they thought the president was spending too much money to fix the broken economy he inherited.

But this holy war to kill Obamacare and sabotage it in any way possible as the law is implemented is unprecedented — and contemptible.

And the worst part is the GOP knows they’d be screwed if it worked — which is why sharper analysts like Greg Sargent, Chris Hayes and Steve Benen just consider the demand to defund the law a fundraising scheme.

If you need proof that the GOP knows repeal would be a disaster look at their latest plan to “replace” the Affordable Care Act being offered by the hardline Republican Study Committee led by Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana:

Scalise didn’t give a lot of details during that phone call, but said the bill would include protections for people with pre-existing conditions — one of the main benefits of Obamacare.“We address that to make sure that people with pre-existing conditions cannot be discriminated against,” he said. He promised, however, that it would not “put in place mandates that increase the costs of health care and push people out of the insurance that they like.”

That’s how you know conservatives have lost.

It’s true Obamacare isn’t that popular yet. But it’s far more popular than the GOP plan to defund it.

What is very popular is removing pre-existing conditions forever. Repealing the law would erase the protections for pre-existing conditions for kids that have already been put in place. And it would prevent those protections from ever going into place — ever.

Why?

There are two ways you can cover people with pre-existing conditions without exploding costs: mandates or single-payer.

The GOP opposes both.

We know ending pre-existing conditions without a mandate raising prices because it’s been tried in New York state, where rates are much higher than the rest of the nation.

What the GOP is offering is a fiction — a plan that can’t work. Why? Because Obamacare/Romneycare is and has been the only conservative alternative to single payer. It eliminates pre-existing conditions and it’s helping to slow costs, despite the GOP lies.

So once they lose this dumb stunt to defund Obamacare, they better get serious about fixing the law. Or they’ll just be speeding us toward a system we know works around the world — single payer.