January 28, 2014 by David K. Sutton

State of the Union 2014, Official GOP Response: More Anti-Obamacare Babble

In the official Republican response to President Obama’s 2014 State of the Union address, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said, “No, we shouldn’t go back to the way things were, but the President’s health care law is not working.”

First, the health care law will need more than one full month before anybody can legitimately make a case for repeal on the grounds that the law is not working. So this is just more Republican hyperbole when it comes to President Obama’s signature achievement.

Second, this is typical conservatism, defending the new status quo. Okay, so conservatives aren’t defending a new status quo that includes the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but increasingly Republicans ARE defending the new health care reform status quo, the new paradigm that stipulates we will not go back to a time before the protections offered in the Affordable Care Act. And so you have to ask yourself, why do Republicans STILL want to repeal the health care law?

But even with their continued calls for repeal, its kind of a big deal that Republicans are now saying, “we shouldn’t go back to the way thing were.” Because before Obamacare, Republicans were perfectly fine with the previous status quo. They were fine with tens of millions uninsured. They were fine with substandard health care plans. They were fine with people being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. And the reason I know they were fine with these things is that they had six years under President George W. Bush to do something, and they did nothing.

This repetitive conservative defense of each new status quo is why progress in America, at every turn, ONLY happens when liberals make it happen. Sure, there were Republicans in the past who championed progress and civil rights, but they were liberal Republicans.