“...including coke bottles, deodorant bottles, steel pipes, baseball bats and broom sticks.”

I’ve been baffled by a helluva mixed metafor there, Keva, but you got my star.

Part of ACA was rallying and corralling the Dems. It was necessary to pull everybody together, because even with a majority they needed everybody and did what they had to do to get them. Ryan plopped out a turd and Trump said “eat this, or else”. Very few Congress critters were impressed and went their own ways…

The real lesson here is that if you call yourself something, the GOP will believe that is what you are. I’m Batman.

Yeah, they had all the time in the world and fucked it up over the course of two weeks. Ryan said they weren’t used to governing and he was proven right.

That would require critical thinking, which I’m fairly certain is something at least 40% of America is incapable of.

They were still surprised that Trump won. If they believed in Trump, they would have been hard at work 6 months ago. “He won? Oh shit. I gotta get to work.”

Your take is essentially right in my opinion. Good analysis here, and here’s the money paragraph:

I wonder if those who recognized that they would need to replace it with something better realize that the only better options are to the left of the ACA.

They’re the dog that caught the car. They never thought it would happen or that they would be in a position to do anything about it. And they had no idea what to do or how to do it. They voted straight repeal 40-something fucking odd times. When they knew it wouldn’t happen. They know there’s no improvement to be made…

I agree. The only thing that would have been better than the ACA would have been even more into socialist territory. Not that I have a problem with that.

Because the only thing “better” than ACA is single-payer and their insurance and pharma overlords wouldn’t like that at all

Thing is, the GOP couldn’t get rid of it, so they just fucked it up as much as they could - like eliminating risk corridors.

The most fantastic best part of all of this is, that they were the ones who purposefully gimped the ACA to make it as undesirable and repealable as possible... and they still couldn’t even think of something better when they’ve had seven fucking years to contemplate it. God damn that’s some top tier incompetence.

The possibility of a Cuban missile crisis-like event should have precluded Americans from ever voting for Trump in the first place. Clinton drove that point home again and again and again and again - but unfortunately CNN, MSNBC and the rest of whatever passes as “journalists” in your country were too eager and…

I think the key thing is — can Republican leadership even state what their current goal of government’s role in health care is.

For Democrats going into the 2008 election, they made two generic promises/goals.
1. Do not touch employer-provided health insurance
2. Get health insurance for Americans who did not currently…

The ACA was WRITTEN by a right wing think tank. You know why they don’t have anything else? Because they LOVE IT. It’s everything they ever wanted.

The funniest thing is that if he had just kept his campaign promise of providing a replacement bill that was “much less expensive and much better” and provided “insurance for everybody” then Democrats and moderate Republicans would have been more than willing to vote to repeal and replace Obamacare and he wouldn’t…

The GOP had an impossible plan:

Please don’t let the Dems turn into the same thing through all of this. Learn from the past.