Here locally, there are two former Republicans who contact me when they receive missives or screeds that they think I should see. One switched sides in 2003 and the other switched sides in 2007, but both are older men who were GOP donors for years, and they remain on every Republican list.
Both offer good, practical suggestions on how Democrats might respond locally to whatever the GOP is selling nationally, suggestions I find very helpful. I don’t know why they seem to be better at opposition than the local Democrats. You have to know your opponent, I guess.
Yesterday, one of the two received a fax at his workplace (he’s an auctioneer) from our House member, Robert Latta.
Latta ran as a moderate in a (then) poor environment for Republicans, but I have yet to see him break ranks with the GOP on any vote, so whatever he claims to believe is essentially immaterial. He is much an extremist as any random Tea Partier.
The fax is a Constituent Opinion Ballot. It asks whether Latta’s constituents want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. I have gotten communications from his office in the past, but no more. I guess I am no longer a constituent. I seem to have dropped off his list after I placed calls to his office last year, asking his support for the Affordable Care Act. That may well be a coincidence or an error, but, really, if it isn’t, what a coward. My polite phone calls merit removal from his list?
There are two interesting portions of the fake ballot. The first is a quote:
According to a study published last fall, by the time Obamacare is fully implemented in 2017, approximately 7.4 million seniors will have been forced out of their Medicare plan…
There’s the obligatory Medicare scare we’ve gotten used to from these fierce and principled opponents of government-run health care. Except Medicare Advantage. That particular government-run program they like because it costs more than the public program, and they’re deficit hawks, as we all know, because they say they are.
Incidentally, that’s a quote not from Rep. Latta but instead from Rep. Wally Herger (R, CA). Representative Latta apparently said nothing worth repeating on health care in his time in office, so he turned to his colleague Wally for the now-obligatory GOP fear-mongering on Medicare.
The second is this:
GOP leaders pledged to repeal and replace the health care law, but the House will not vote on a separate replacement bill next week. Instead, lawmakers will consider a resolution that instructs three committees to report health care legislation. The resolution sets 12 goals for the bill, including lowering health care costs and premiums, increasing the number of insured Americans and “to provide people with pre-existing conditions access to affordable health care coverage”.
Is that an admission that there are popular parts of the ACA, and Republicans are going to have to pretend they plan to address health care, if only through a vote on a resolution to do something or other, sometime?