House Speaker Paul D. Ryan conceded, “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future.”
“I’ve been in this job eight years, and I’m wracking my brain to think of one thing our party has done that’s been something positive, that’s been something other than stopping something else from happening,” Representative Tom Rooney of Florida.
For Republicans, repealing Obamacare has always been a talking point and not much else. With little expectation that they would have the legislative opportunity to overturn the law, the GOP railed against the bill as if it was the devil itself. They repeatedly lied to their supporters about the bill. They claimed that it cost people care when it hadn’t. They said it increased health care costs when it didn’t. And they repeatedly said that repealing it would make American health care better, when it wouldn’t.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/03/24/republicans-never-wanted-kill-obamacare/wsjvgFYmgFilzU5QVyDxeN/story.html
It’s not simply that President Trump and the Republicans are incompetent and inexperienced, though they are...
Their power in government conceals their slipping hold on public legitimacy.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/24/opinion/sunday/the-gops-existential-crisis.html?referer=https://news.google.com/news/m/more?ncl=dBC71PpoEhBzviMHhgQw3luEapmnM&authuser=0&ned=us&topic=n
"Moving from an opposition party to a governing party," Ryan said, "comes with growing pains, and, well, we're feeling those growing pains now."
The inability of Republicans to reach consensus on a bill, given its control of the House, Senate and White House, badly hurts its image as a party that can govern, and Ryan admitted as much on Friday.
The GOP has vowed repeatedly over the past eight years that it would repeal and replace Obamacare.
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/24/521395060/ryan-trump-meet-as-more-republicans-defect-from-health-care-bill
