Republicans have placed on a clinic on over-promising during the last several years.
Even if you were paying only very little attention, you would have gotten the distinct impression over the last four election cycles that the GOP was unalterably dedicated to repealing and replacing ObamaCare.
It didn't matter what year the Republicans were running (2010, 2012, 2021 or 2021) or what presidential candidate (earnest, establishment-friendly Mitt Romney or bombastic outsider Donald Trump), repeal of ObamaCare remained the consistent theme.
The party didn't leave anything in doubt. This didn't depend on weasel words or escape hatches. Republicans pledged to, as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz put it, repeal “every blasted word of ObamaCare.” And never gradually, not slowly with time, but ASAP.
Only exaggerating a little more than other Republicans, Trump said this past year that “we will be able to immediately repeal and replace ObamaCare. Have to do it. I'll ask Congress to convene a special session therefore we can repeal and replace, and it will be such an honor for me personally, for you, and for everybody in this country, because ObamaCare has to be replaced, and we'll do it very, very quickly.”
With the home on the verge perhaps of getting a repeal-and-replace bill through, it's worth recalling time of sweeping promises. The House bill will roll back ObamaCare taxes and introduce a significant reform of Medicaid, but when you are looking at the center of ObamaCare – the regulations – it only enables states to obtain waivers, based on certain conditions.
This is a bill probably worth having, even if it might have earned the derision of Republicans back in the days once they were winning elections with Churchillian statements of resolve on ObamaCare. Then, it would have been considered a contemptible half-a-loaf – at best. Now, when Republicans have power, everything looks different.
First, you will find the cold feet. When Republicans were confronted by the potential of writing law instead of making symbolic gestures, they lost a lot of their enthusiasm for that repeal-only bill they had sent to the president's desk for any ritual veto in January 2021. (Republican support for that bill at the time was near-unanimous, 239-3 in the home and 52-2 within the Senate.)
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Second, while think-tank types and a few officeholders seriously grappled with what a replacement bill would look like, the party didn't have consensus on replace. For much of the party, it had been precisely the second part of the repeal-and-replace slogan.
Third, many Republican moderates in the House were highly unwilling to repeal ObamaCare, even though they hadn't bothered to allow anyone know.
Finally, the highest-profile ObamaCare regulations, especially the protections for people with pre-existing conditions, are politically potent. Whether or not to eliminate them and how has proved the main sticking point in the House, and even the carefully crafted waiver provision is susceptible to distortion and stinging attack.
All of this means House Republicans have been hard-pressed to pass through an incomplete and jury-rigged repeal-and-replace bill. To their credit, they didn't simply give up following the failure from the first version. As well as their work continues to be significantly complicated if you take into account so what can ultimately survive under Senate rules bypassing the filibuster.
Checking this area of the health care bill in the House, just about any healthcare bill, will impart some momentum towards the effort, although it's unclear exactly what the prospects come in the Senate, where the divisions over ObamaCare are as stark as in the House and the margin for error even smaller.
What is apparent is that this hasn't been the glorious triumph as advertised election after election. The cliché is that you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Republicans campaigned for years in stark exaggerations and today are governing in flawed compromises.
