It’s a dicey situation for establishment GOP candidates and their tea-party opponents. Nix, not fix: GOP pushed on ACA

Republican primary candidates are caught in an Obamacare fix.

Even the slightest hint that a GOP contender might support anything besides all-out repeal of the health care law is drawing attacks from the right. So, increasingly, in races across the country, proposals to fix the existing law or retain any of it are being ruled out by Republicans eager to further burnish their conservative credentials.


It’s a dicey situation for both establishment Republican candidates and their tea-party inspired opponents.

Health care looks to be the dominant issue of the 2014 midterm elections, so it’s natural that GOP candidates in a primary, especially those taking on incumbents, would try to outflank each other on the right. But Republican pollsters warn that it’s hard to paint many of the current crop of GOP candidates as not anti-Obamacare enough and that it could backfire on opponents who try. Democrats, meanwhile, are hoping the primary drama turns into another case of GOP overreach that ultimately alienates moderate voters in the general election.

( PHOTOS: 10 Sebelius quotes about Obamacare website)

Rep. Jack Kingston, who is running for an open Senate seat in Georgia, learned the dangers of the “don’t fix it, just nix it” dynamic earlier this month when he argued against simply letting Obamacare fail.

The congressman mentioned in a radio interview that “a lot of conservatives say ‘No, just step back and let this thing fall to pieces on its own,’ but I don’t think that that’s always the responsible thing to do. I think we need to be working for things that improve health care for all of us.”

His opponent Paul Broun, a fellow GOP House member, quickly accused Kingston of wanting to “keep” Obamacare.

( PHOTOS: 12 Democrats criticizing the Obamacare rollout)

He cited Kingston’s vote for a Republican-sponsored bill that was intended to protect people set to lose their health insurance next year by letting them keep policies that would have been canceled under Obamacare. The White House opposed the bill, arguing it would undermine the new health law’s standards. Broun was one of just four Republicans who voted against the measure; he said it was because it didn’t go far enough to scrap the law.

“I don’t want to fix Obamacare. I want to get rid of it,” Broun said in blasting Kingston, whose campaign responded by saying he still wants to repeal the law.

The health care law is complex, and as more of its elements kick in, it will become impossible to repeal in its entirety. Even if Republicans capture the Senate in 2014, President Barack Obama has vowed to stop them from dismantling his signature legislative achievement.

( PHOTOS: 10 Sebelius quotes about Obamacare website)

In addition, polls have shown substantial support for parts of the law, such as requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, or allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ plans until they are 26 — a provision that the White House says has already covered more than 3 million people.

It’s tough to say whether voters might abandon a Republican candidate altogether based on the nuances of how much he or she wants to gut the health care law, but Democrats, nonetheless, see an opening. They point to fresh polls that show slightly more voters want to “implement and fix” the law than to “repeal and replace” it — the mantra the GOP has long used.

“The question for voters in these races is not whether they support or oppose the law,” said Matt Canter, deputy executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, “but do they want a candidate who will work to fix it or a Republican who is hell-bent on repealing the law, wasting money and continuing the same partisan battles of the last several years.”

Iowa Senate candidate Matt Whitaker was criticized earlier this year when he suggested that parts of the law might be worth keeping. “We don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water,” he told a Des Moines Register columnist in May. “It’s a very easy sound bite to say ‘repeal Obamacare,’ or ‘repeal the Affordable Care Act,’ but there are actually some good things.”

The blowback in the crowded primary field led the former U.S. attorney to announce that he had examined the law more closely and found nothing good in it, something The Iowa Republican, a widely read blog, branded a “flip-flop.” Whitaker then signed a pledge to try to defund the law.

That pledge has been promoted by the Senate Conservatives Fund, a group that has challenged establishment Republicans and opposes tinkering with the law. The group supported conservatives’ bid to halt the law’s implementation during a fiscal showdown in the fall, which led to a government shutdown. The shutdown badly damaged Republicans in the polls.

“Obamacare can’t be fixed, and conservatives are right to be skeptical of Republicans who think it can,” said Matt Hoskins, the group’s executive director.

In Michigan, former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, who has cleared the field for Senate but is still working to shore up support on her right, suggested “fixes” on a local radio show last month. “I supported defunding [the health law] because I thought that was a way to get the conversation going. We’re past that now,” she said. “We need to now fix this.”

A few hours later, she clarified on Facebook that she still supports full repeal, “if we can get it repealed.”

While emphasizing the importance of repealing the law, even the most virulent anti-Obamacare Republicans stop short of saying they wouldn’t try to replace it with their own solutions. They insist, however, that there’s no way to work within the existing law’s framework, so there needs to be a clean slate.

Take Matt Bevin, the wealthy tea party-backed businessman who is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the primary. Bevin has faulted the incumbent for raising money from health care companies that stand to profit from making Obamacare work. He has also used procedural votes as fodder against the Kentucky senator — blasting McConnell for breaking with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on a cloture vote that ended the government shutdown.

Bevin, who says McConnell “has talked a big game, but it is all talk,” nonetheless stressed that he doesn’t oppose trying to improve health care. He says people should be able to buy insurance across state lines, that health savings accounts should offer more incentives and that there should be block grants for states to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

But trying to improve the existing law is “a fool’s game,” he said. “It’s like saying we’re gonna try to make cancer work for you.”

The McConnell campaign dismissed Bevin’s criticisms as desperate. “There is no question that Sen. McConnell has been the No. 1 opponent of Obamacare since Day One,” spokeswoman Allison Moore said.

Running against Obamacare in Kentucky has some extra risks: It’s one of the states where it’s working well. In fact, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear and the Kentucky exchange have become a national model for successful implementation.

Republican pollster Whit Ayres predicted that efforts by primary challengers to label incumbent Republicans as pro-Obamacare won’t get them very far.

“If you voted against Obamacare, argued against Obamacare and voted repeatedly to get rid of Obamacare, there’s not a whole lot of room to the right to get around these guys,” he said. “A candidate can say anything. That doesn’t mean people will believe it. The best candidate message has the virtue of being true. Trying to drive a message that voters know and believe is demonstrably untrue is a losing strategy.”

GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway noted that no Republicans voted for the health care law in the first place, and that the party’s primary voters won’t oppose a candidate just because they “once smiled when somebody said the word ‘Obamacare.’” She called the rush to the right on the health care law an example of “a reliable lemming effect in politics in that when there’s one huge explosive issue, everyone runs towards it and tries to suck it dry.”

Nonetheless, some candidates are doing whatever they can in what little space they have.

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts is facing a challenge from physician Milton Wolf. The latter acknowledges that Roberts has consistently voted against the law but says that he hasn’t been outspoken enough against it. Wolf also blames Roberts for voting to confirm Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor, as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

“You cannot say you oppose Obamacare when you crowned the queen of Obamacare,” Wolf said.

After Wolf criticized him, Roberts in October called for Sebelius’s resignation.

This article tagged under: GOP

Republicans

Politics

Obamacare