# Why did the Republicans demonize Obamacare so much from the start? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 27, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147 "2017-03-27T16:32:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/1 "2017-03-27T16:32:55Z")
It is funny to me to see how the Republicans have put themselves in such a tough situation with health care. They can’t make a more conservative version of Obamacare, since it is already fairly conservative and modeled on Romneycare. But they have to do something since they’ve yelled about how terrible Obamacare is for 7 years and kept trying to repeal it. If they had only criticized it from the start and said it wasn’t good enough, then they could work with Democrats on something better, but after saying it’s absolutely awful, you can’t come back and say it just needs tweaks. This made me wonder why did they go so hard against it from the start? Was it just because it was Obama’s first big thing and they wanted him to be a failure, or is there something else I’m forgetting? ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/2 "2017-03-27T16:50:27Z")
It was McConnell’s plan from the very start to cripple a Democratic president by opposing every single thing he did. He laid out this plan immediately after Obama was elected. The goal was to “make health care Obama’s Waterloo” and hobble any momentum or political capital Obama had. This was, in some ways, very successful: Republicans came back from their predicted decades in the wilderness within a cycle or two. However, the initial goal of preventing the ACA from happening was a failure. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/3 "2017-03-27T16:59:00Z")
A couple of quotes and cites: [From Time](http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/the-party-of-no-new-details-on-the-gop-plot-to-obstruct-obama/): > [@](#): > > TIME just published “The Party of No,” an article adapted from my new book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era. It reveals some of my reporting on the Republican plot to obstruct President Obama before he even took office, including secret meetings led by House GOP whip Eric Cantor (in December 2008) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (in early January 2009) in which they laid out their daring (though cynical and political) no-honeymoon strategy of all-out resistance to a popular President-elect during an economic emergency. “If he was for it,” former Ohio Senator George Voinovich explained, “we had to be against it.” [Re: “Waterloo”](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-senator-wont-retreat-from-waterloo-comment/) > [@](#): > > Republican Sen. Jim DeMint refused to back down from comments last week in which he said a White House defeat on health care reform would be President Obama’s “Waterloo.” > > “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,” the South Carolina Republican, pictured center, was quoted last week as telling fellow conservatives. It was a concerted and intentional effort from the beginning that, rather than work with Obama and try to develop a bipartisan healthcare bill that could be seen as a victory for the president, the GOP would instead actively undermine and sabotage any efforts made and try to pin all the fiasco on the Democrats by forcing them to go alone in passing any legislation. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/4 "2017-03-27T17:00:50Z")
The nature of health care insurance is such that it quickly increases in expense and people who have it are afraid of losing it. This means it is hard to replace or repeal and quickly grows. The party of smaller government must find government takeovers of healthcare. There is nothing really conservative about Obamacare. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/5 "2017-03-27T17:14:01Z")
So it was mainly because this was Obama’s first big thing that the Republicans opposed it? If his first big push was for improving infrastructure then the Republicans would have been yelling about how terrible Obamastructure was instead? > [@puddleglum](#): > > The nature of health care insurance is such that it quickly increases in expense and people who have it are afraid of losing it. This means it is hard to replace or repeal and quickly grows. The party of smaller government must find government takeovers of healthcare. > There is nothing really conservative about Obamacare. I guess the most conservative view would be that the government has no business doing health care. But if you think they should be involved at all, it would seem to be hard to make a more conservative version than Obamacare, considering how the idea for the individual mandate was from the Heritage foundation, and the health insurance exchanges were thought up and supported by Republican legislators. If there was a good conservative alternative to Obamacare, I would think that’s what Paul Ryan would have proposed, instead of the Obamacare lite that was Ryancare/Trumpcare. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/6 "2017-03-27T17:19:00Z")
At least some of their opposition was to _exactly_ this state: It’s very hard to take away an existing benefit in a democracy, because the people who have it will vote against you in tremendous numbers. Not providing the benefit to begin with doesn’t have the same result. So it can make sense to strongly resist the creation of a new socialized benefit while at the same time doing relatively little once it’s been in effect for a few years. The existence of the ACA created a powerful voting bloc made up of the people who are it’s primary beneficiaries. I don’t know how much the above was the _primary_ motivation for the Republicans. Certainly, opposing everything that Obama did for the sake of opposing him was part of it, and maybe even the dominant factor. At least part of the Democrats strategy relied on the above effect, too. The ACA was in part a “foot in the door”. It didn’t have to be a perfect program, it just had to be popular enough to make it really hard to remove. It’s interesting to consider a hypothetical world in which Romney beat Obama in 2012. If you look at [the first chart in this article](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-gop-bill-could-change-health-care-in-8-charts/), you see that by 2012, the uninsured rate hadn’t changed much. It looks like it’s basically constant given the noise in the background data. The ACA had been law for ~2 years, but its effects hadn’t really been felt yet. I expect that in that world, the Republicans really would have simply run a straight repeal bill and Romney would have signed it. There wouldn’t be enough people losing insurance as result, because most of them hadn’t gotten it yet. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/7 "2017-03-27T17:19:01Z")
Racism. It’s merely an extension of their “Southern strategy” where you can no longer say “nigger, nigger” and have to code the blatant racism in other ways. [https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/](https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/) > **[How the GOP became the "White Man's Party"](https://www.salon.com/2013/12/22/how_the_gop_became_the_white_mans_party/)** > > From Nixon to Rand, Republicans have banked on the unerring support of Southern white men. Here's how it came to be [https://storify.com/docrocktex26/white-poverty-the-black-middle-class-the-southern-](https://storify.com/docrocktex26/white-poverty-the-black-middle-class-the-southern-) ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/8 "2017-03-27T17:19:57Z")
That was also the Era of [del]Good Feelings[/del] The Tea Party when millions of ordinary Americans were baying at the moon in unison to rid themselves of this turbulent Kenyan. The blame’s not just on the Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/9 "2017-03-27T17:27:34Z")
> [@Sam\_Lowry](#): > > So it was mainly because this was Obama’s first big thing that the Republicans opposed it? If his first big push was for improving infrastructure then the Republicans would have been yelling about how terrible Obamastructure was instead? They were going to yell about anything Obama proposed (and they did) although, had they managed to trip Obama up on infrastructure first then healthcare may have never gone on the table. Some people feel that the Democrats made an error is trying to achieve healthcare first but, if they knew they only had one big thing to use their power on, then healthcare was the hill to die on. The GOP also opposed the Stimulus to a man as well, as you may recall [Edit: Almost; in the Senate, Collins, Snowe and Specter voted in favor though Specter then switched parties]. Again, no attempts at a bipartisan compromise, just a repeated chorus that it was terrible, socialist, yadda yadda because that was more valuable to them than the risk of Obama having a victory. I disagree that racism played any major role in congressional strategy – they would have done the same with Clinton or Edwards. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/10 "2017-03-27T17:33:07Z")
Naw, they wouldn’t have. For starters, they never operated like this with Clinton back in the 1990s. Their opposition was based upon doing their utmost to appeal to their core demographic, this demographic becoming more and more bold so that they nominated an unapologetic racist as President 8 years later… and elected him. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/11 "2017-03-27T21:08:49Z")
Special interest pressure. There are people and businesses who are making tremendous profits out of our existing private health care system. They don’t want to change the system and lose those profits. So they have donated portions of their profits to politicians to oppose any significant changes in American health care. I’ve said before that the Republicans aren’t opposed to health care reform out of fear it will fail. They’re opposed to it out of fear it will succeed. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/12 "2017-03-27T21:14:32Z")
I beg to differ. Once the Newt took over as speaker, the house adopted the same strategy. It is not generally admitted today that the ACA was essentially a GOP proposal from the days of Bush I, to prevent real (that is single payer) medicare from being adopted. And it was very similar to Romneycare in Mass. In 2012, Romney didn’t deny it, merely said that every state should do as it liked. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/13 "2017-03-27T21:47:32Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Racism. It’s merely an extension of their “Southern strategy” where you can no longer say “nigger, nigger” and have to code the blatant racism in other ways. > > [https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/](https://www.thenation.com/article/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/) > > [http://www.salon.com/2013/12/22/how\_the\_gop\_became\_the\_white\_mans\_party/](http://www.salon.com/2013/12/22/how_the_gop_became_the_white_mans_party/) > > [https://storify.com/docrocktex26/white-poverty-the-black-middle-class-the-southern-](https://storify.com/docrocktex26/white-poverty-the-black-middle-class-the-southern-) I agree with this 100% It really was/is that simple. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/14 "2017-03-27T21:52:00Z")
They demonized Obamacare from the start because many of them had demonized Obama from the start. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/15 "2017-03-27T21:55:28Z")
It was basically everything Republicans despise all wrapped into one package: a new entitlement program, a new set of mandates, a wealth transfer program, all put forward by the politician they most hated in recent history. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/16 "2017-03-27T23:10:22Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Naw, they wouldn’t have. For starters, they never operated like this with Clinton back in the 1990s. I don’t follow you. Of course they didn’t fight that hard against Clinton’s efforts in the 1990s; they quickly _foiled_ Clinton’s efforts back in the 1990s. If not for that, then for all I know they would’ve pulled out all the stops against Clinton’s efforts the way they did against Obama’s; hell, for all I know, they would’ve worked even _harder._ But since they successfully stopped Clinton cold so fast, all we can really say is that it’s like the gag about how you found your keys in the last place you looked for them: naturally you didn’t keep at it; you stopped once you got what you wanted! ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/17 "2017-03-27T23:11:48Z")
The Repubs in the 90s did not have a blanket “we are going to block everything this guy is doing” strategy in the 1990s. They adopted that with Obama. Why, I wonder? (not) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/18 "2017-03-27T23:30:27Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > The Repubs in the 90s did not have a blanket “we are going to block everything this guy is doing” strategy in the 1990s. They adopted that with Obama. Why, I wonder? (not) And if they’d impeached Obama but not Clinton, you’d wonder aloud about that, too; but it was the other way around, so you don’t. They had more government shutdowns under Clinton than under Obama; I’m sure you’d point at that, if it’d been reversed. And, again, if Obama had failed to get his healthcare bill passed while Clinton had succeeded, you could claim the _hell_ out of that as evidence; but you can’t. They actually stopped one guy and not the other – and you think that’s proof they wouldn’t have tried as hard against the guy they beat _easy?_ Seriously? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/19 "2017-03-27T23:35:59Z")
Not at all. They hated Clinton, no doubt. But their hatred of Obama was even off _that_ chart. Hell, the Repubs _branded_ the ACA “Obamacare” because they knew it would play well to their base. Find a single Clinton law that he signed that they kept voting to repeal, over and over again, knowing he would veto it. (I won’t even ask you to go further and find one that they voted for repeal over and over… and once he was gone, they didn’t have the gonads to actually do what they said they were going to do. Just find one that they kept on repealing. One. Please.) Sorry. Republican strategist Lee Atwater nailed it in 1981: You can’t say “Nigger, Nigger”, but you _can_ hint at it… and that’s the Republican strategy post-1972, blooming to full fruition 2009-2016, and now we get Trump. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2017, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147/20 "2017-03-27T23:45:09Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Republican strategist Lee Atwater nailed it in 1981: You can’t say “Nigger, Nigger”, but you _can_ hint at it… and that’s the Republican strategy post-1972, blooming to full fruition 2009-2016, and now we get Trump. Let me get this straight: the American electorate was so racist that hinting at racism puts a white Republican in office if he’s running against a _white_ Democrat – but not if one is running against a _black_ Democrat, who wins and wins? That’s downright weird. You think the strategy bloomed “to full fruition 2009-2016,” which explains – why the black guy got re-elected in 2012? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-the-republicans-demonize-obamacare-so-much-from-the-start/783147.md?page=2)