Last week Republican pollster Bill McIntruff told The Wall Street Journal that the shift would lead to more "nuanced" criticism. “You have to talk about what specifically they have screwed up, what went wrong what needs to be fixed. You have to have a bill of particulars about what hasn’t worked,” McInturff said. In other words, you have to list what you would fix, which is more or less what Democrats have been doing. An example might be running more ads featuring people who had to switch plans, though American for Prosperity have already invested millions in that strategy with ads that usually lack nuance.

As far as spin goes, this isn't convincing. Drucker's piece links to last week's Washington Post story on the GOP's signs of retreat from full repeal. In states like Oregon, Texas, Michigan, and Nevada, there have been instances of GOP candidates acknowledging they want to “work in a bipartisan manner to fix health care the right way,” or supporting the law's Medicaid expansion. That is the new strategy, and at the very least, it's not a pipe dream like "repeal and replace."

Sen. Ron Johnson emphasized a truth acknowledged by several Republicans: repeal was never going to happen. He told Slate's David Weigel that "you'll never repeal Obamacare as long as Obama is in the White House... That's why I never supported defund, because I knew it was impossible." And that is why "repeal and replace" has to go, not because the party needs a more "nuanced" approach to reach voters across the aisle, but because more and more 2014 candidates are realizing they don't want to run on a replacement bill that won't get voted on for a law that won't get repealed.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.