Lose, Declare Victory
AJ Robinson

I’ve been mystified by the actions of the Republican Party in recent years. Now, sure, some of the loco Tea Baggers are truly off the deep end, but that’s actually not all that’s new. Back when I was a kid, there was the John Birch Society, and they were y “out there,” in terms of ideas and beliefs.

Reasonable members of the GOP kept the party level headed.

The thing was this. Reasonable members of the party kept its less thoughtful members from spouting pure nonsense. Impure non-sense was okay in those days.

The GOP opposed Social Security, but didn’t go thermal when it passed. They opposed the GI Bill, calling it a welfare programme, but didn’t rip it to shreds in the media on a daily basis. The GOP opposed Medicare and Medicaid; Ronald Reagan even recorded an album where he talked about Medicare being a slippery slope to a socialistic state. Today, the GOP fight to end these programmes by privatizing them, and even argue that they’re going to bust the budget, but few among their ranks call these programmes evil.

On the other hand, there’s the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which the GOP delight in calling Obamacare. Since its inception, the GOP has proclaimed it a job killer, a government takeover of the entire healthcare industry and destined to bring down the whole nation; those are some of their milder comments.

Wow. I have to wonder: When will the hordes of locusts descend? Chicken Little was calm, cooled and collected compared to these people.

This makes me wonder.

I also kept wondering. What are they going to do when none of their fears come pass. In a few years, when the programme is fully in place and the nation is humming along just fine, what will the GOP say then?

Granted, Fox “News” will completely ignore the issue, but there are other media outlets; some of them will at least mention it once in a while, maybe even ask a difficult question of the GOP politicians. Not that they’ll answer or the media will actually press them for a real response, but it’s the sort of thing that people will take note of, and maybe even remember come election time.

I kept coming back to that question: What will the GOP do?

Then, the other day, it came to me. It’s so simple I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. It’s actually quite brilliant. I guess that’s why I didn’t think of it.

Let’s face it, the GOP of today has many good and bad traits, but when you think of them one word that doesn’t come to mind is brilliant! Anyway, I digress. The GOP will simply lose and declare victory. They keep talking about repealing and replacing the ACA, but they never give any details. The reason is simple: they have none. As the ACA is pretty darn good, nothing they can come up with is different, novel or an improvement.

Then I saw the answer.

That’s when I saw the answer to their problem. They will simply “repeal” the ACA and “replace” it with the exact same thing. Oh sure, maybe they’ll adjust it a bit, cut the taxes for the big guys and put more of the costs on the Middle Class, but, overall, it will stay the same.

The GOP will then declare they fixed the “horrible mistake” of the Democrats and declare victory in their quest to fix healthcare. Fox “News” will spend several weeks crowing the new law, how great it is, the “lame-stream media” won’t say much of anything; it definitely won’t have the guts to call the GOP out on their lies and the voters will ignore the issue.

Huh, now that I think of it, no, they won’t do this last point. As I said, the GOP of today ain’t all that sharp. I don’t see them being smart enough to pull together enough members of Congress to pull this off. Sure was a great idea.