The GOP’s Obamacare Insanity

By Robert Mann

Among the definitions of insanity is one often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That, of course, could explain why the Republican-led U.S. House voted more than 40 times to repeal Obamacare, somehow expecting President Barack Obama to abandon his signature legislative achievement.

That’s absurd, I know, but many tea party Republican House members actually believed Obama would surrender to their demands.

Here’s my own definition of insanity: “Detesting Obama so much that you fail to recognize that he and his party have accepted your policy ideas on health care.” That is, in fact, a very accurate description of the Republican Party’s current derangement.

And derangement it is.

It’s a deranged party that would slander Obama as a socialist for adopting many ideas first promulgated by conservative Republicans decades ago. It’s a deranged party that rejects a free-market approach to health care – something it has long championed – simply because Obama now supports it. It’s a deranged party that would shutter the entire federal government over its irrational loathing of Obamacare with a strategy, that even if it succeeded, would have left Obamacare intact. It’s a deranged party that says it’s socialism to require citizens to purchase health insurance when that party invented the very idea.

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