If you try to get rid of all that welfare-state stuff at once, voters will never go for it. We can argue forever that they're wrong, that it's not sustainable, etc., but it doesn't matter if we can't convince them of that truth. We've been trying for 40+ years, and it hasn't worked.
Maybe if we just try harder, we'll have complete totalitarianism by nightfall.
Obamacare is just one more brick in the wall, one more piece of the socialist welfare state. Removing it IS incremental, especially when you look at a big picture which has the Federal Government regulating everything from filling in mudholes in your yard to the bulbs in your light socket to how much water your toilet flushes and whether you can use your fireplace to keep warm, not to mention direct control of over half the land west of the Mississippi. Removing Obamacare IS incrementalism when compared to the leviathan that is Socialism in our government, and they could not stand by their promises in Congress long enough to rid us of that one fragment.
Damn them for the pack of liars and thieves they are.
But we got here through relentless incrementalism from the left.
and the ACA was just one of those increments.
They got people to swallow socialism one bite at a time, and realistically, that's the only way it is ever going to get reversed.
So reverse it already. The economy-choking bite that was shoved down America's throat can be repealed in one increment except for one thing. The Republican Party is crawling with, lousy with cryptosocialists who are just as willing to buy votes with our Liberty and treasure as the damned Democrats.
And realistically, that was the only way to get rid of ObamaCare.
If our strategery is to remove every monolith the Democrat/Socialists set in the road one small crumb at a time, the battle is lost.
The inevitable result is that totalitarian government the Democrats (and, apparently some wearing the 'R') crave.
It is indeed a question of principle, and if those principles cannot be restored (which they will not with such methods), the Republic might crawl along to its demise, but crawl it will like a wounded animal, under the ever increasing burden of socialism until it collapses.
We can't eliminate the Medicaid subsidy completely, but making it a block grant and reducing it over time would have been a move in a positive direction. The votes were not there for completely repeal, so Ryan wanted to roll it back one step at a time because that was the only way it was going to happen. Conservatives opposed it because it wasn't "enough", and the end result is likely going to be movement in the opposite direction.
We can all go to our graves smugly congratulating ourselves that we were "right" as the country goes down the tubes. But that doesn't help us or our children outside of some Randian fantasy world. If we want to actually win rather than virtue-signal, we have to get smarter tactically.
There comes a time when we must grab the bull by the tail and face the situation.
The reality is that Washington D.C. has become Kabuki central, with a lot of posturing by the GOPe when it is known such theater will have no effect, but come the call for question those spineless bastards will back down at the drop of a hat. When it is time to play for 'keeps' they can not be counted on, except to throw the aces and draw new cards. There are a principled few who now are getting the blame for this failure because they are in the minority, but the majority of Republicans there are the problem, not the solution, because their resolve is not to remove the socialist acts of the Democrats but to retain them. Further evidence of this is the abandonment of the issue, rather than moving to the right to pick up votes.
The Democrats had no problem imposing this disaster in one fell swoop, the Republicans should have no problem removing it. Never has the term RINO been so relevant.
Doubtless, in the runup to the 2018 election, enough of them will claim they were for full repeal that, if counted, the vote should have been overwhelming. All that snake Ryan did was ensure they could make that claim by pulling the bill without a vote, and the posturing will continue, yet another term.
