RUSH: Now, something else with health care that I’m gonna get in the next half hour, ’cause… (sigh) I told you what the Democrats were gonna do when they lost that special election in Florida.
They were gonna say, “Hey, you know what? This isn’t the same bill that we voted for, and we want to fix it.” This is another Fox News story about how the Democrats are pushing Obamacare remedies. It’s a compilation of stories. This one story is a compilation of stories about how the “fix” of Obamacare is the new Democrat strategy and how the Republicans are helping them with it.
Now, Boehner came out and said, “No, we’re not! We’re not!” Boehner got really mad at Drudge for the way Drudge characterized the Republican plan here to lessen the hit on small businesses. (interruption) They did and they are. I know. Boehner came out and said they’re not and they didn’t. Drudge says it is and they did. The Republicans are making Obamacare more palatable to small businesses. They’re not repealing it.
They’re making it more palatable. Boehner said, “We’re trying to help our constituents, for crying out loud! We’re actually changing Obamacare.” People want it repealed. The point here is it was way premature to start running around thinking that the Republicans had already won the Senate because of Senate Democrats incumbent in trouble with Obamacare.
All they’ve gotta do — and they’re doing it — is point out that what it is now is not what they voted for. They don’t even have to mention Obama. They don’t even have to throw Obamacare under the bus, ’cause the media’s not gonna ask ’em what they mean. Their Republican Senate opponent will have to do that in an ad. “Well, I see here that Mr. Senator Pryor is throwing President Obama under the bus!
“He’s saying Obama is the one who changed the bill, blah, blah,” and then make Pryor deny it. Whether the Republicans will go for the throat that way remains to be seen. But the Democrats think they’ve got a way, is the point, to mitigate the damage of voting for Obamacare. That is to say, “Unh, uh, uh! That’s not what we voted for now, and we want to fix it. We want to join the president in making it work for you! The Republicans don’t want you to have it. They’ll take it away!”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One thing the Republicans are doing is, they are softening the blow of Obamacare by offering a change in the impact of Obamacare on small businesses. Now, the original Republican hatemonger, Abraham Lincoln (Remember him?) said, “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly,” which this one has not been. This one has yet to be fully implemented, by design, so that you don’t know how bad it is until it’s too late to vote the people out of office who did it to you.
So the Republicans decided to soften the blow while leaving it intact. Drudge reported that, and Boehner said, “We didn’t soften the blow! We didn’t expand Obamacare! We repealed a piece of it.” So it’s an argument of semantics going on, but the bottom line is that what the Republicans want to do if they succeed with it would be to soften the blow of Obamacare, which is not a good idea, unless you think it isn’t gonna get repealed.
If you’re the Republicans and you think it isn’t gonna get repealed and your objective is to make it the least damaging you can, then of course, you do what they did. But if you think you’re still gonna try to repeal it, you don’t make it more appealable. That’s just me, and I’m just the guy on the radio.