How the Stupid Party Gets Its Name

From RedState

By Erick Erickson

Today was another fine example of how the Republican Party gets labeled as the stupid party.

Senator Dick Durbin hinted two days ago that the Senate Democrats would be unified in their opposition to repeal Obamacare except for one or two. In other words, the GOP had the opportunity to get Democrats to jump ship.

But Democrats have signaled that they want to “fix” Obamacare, not repeal it. So the GOP gladly obliged. Without any obstruction, the GOP went along with the Democrats’ changes to the onerous 1099 provision.

You may say that is a good thing, and you would be right. Except that doing this, instead of keeping the pain in place until Obamacare is repealed, makes the pain less and less. And as the pain becomes less and less because Republicans work with Democrats to “fix” Obamacare, it becomes less and less likely that Obamacare will actually get repealed.

No Democrat had to vote for repeal because they knew they’d get a chance to say they were “fixing” Obamacare. And the headline will now be that the GOP and Democrats in the Senate are cooperating on a “fix” instead of repeal.

On top of that, however, is the stupidity — sheer stupidity — of certain Republicans now trying to undermine the litigation against Obamacare. I’m looking at you Senators Lindsey Graham and John Barasso.

Barasso and Graham have proposed to let states opt-out of having the citizens of the several states be placed in the individual mandate.

If states can opt out of the individual mandate, they no longer have grounds to keep up their lawsuit in federal court. Why? Because if they can choose to opt out of the individual mandate, it is no longer a constitutional obstruction to them.

Further, proposing this and other changes to Obamacare gives Justice Anthony Kennedy plausible grounds to say, “Look! Obamacare is severable and it can survive without the individual mandate.”

Tinkering with Obamacare undermines both the lawsuit against Obamacare and the effort for full repeal. It doesn’t take a genius to know that, but it does take the stupid party to ignore it.