I suppose that House Republicans had no choice but to pass a repeal of health care reform after all their crazed rhetoric on the campaign trail. But I wonder how far they are willing to go to mess with the implementation over the next two years. I know that Nancy Pelosi’s House passed hundreds of bills that the Senate either ignored or never had time to take up. Other than the Cap & Trade bill, none of those House bills had much consequence. I don’t think you get a whole lot of mileage out of passing bills that don’t become law. And I think obsessing about a law that you can’t repeal by trying to chip away at it in the appropriations process is really not an effective way to govern. Boehner promised today that the committees with jurisdiction are going to work on an alternative (or replacement) health care reform bill, but that means hearings and mark-ups, and that just seems like a monumental misuse of time and resources. I don’t honestly think the committees will actually do it. But if they do it certainly won’t do the Republicans any good.
I don’t know. Do you think Obama’s opponent in 2012 is going to run on a platform of repealing ObamaCare? Wouldn’t they want to shape that alternative rather than take up the banner of whatever joke of a plan the House Republicans can come up with in their faux-hearings and Potemkin mark-ups?
At some point, the Republicans will have to face up to the fact that their rhetoric has no relationship to reality. Bill Frist already know this, but I think they’ll all know it soon enough.