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| Courtesy of Facebook. |
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is set to announce Tuesday that she has signed on to the Defund Obamacare movement.
“Forced enrollment in Obama’s ‘Unaffordable Care Act’ is weeks away,” Palin says in a statement to be released by the Senate Conservatives Fund and shared early with Post Politics. “This beast must be stopped — by not funding it. Today, Todd and I joined with many of our fellow citizens to urge those in the U.S. Senate to not fund Obamacare.”
Defund Obamacare supporters pledge to not support any government funding that includes money for Obamacare.
As we all know this is of course the kiss of death for the movement, but to be fair it was a cancerous movement that was already killing its host.
A recent Hart Research/SEIU poll on voter attitudes toward the ACA makes the point even more clearly. As Hart Research puts in in their memo on the poll:
Voters feel intensely negative toward Republican candidates who have worked to repeal or undermine the law, especially those who are unwilling to help their constituents take advantage of the benefits and protections available to them under the ACA….Seventy-one percent of voters express unfavorable feelings toward “a Republican who, as an elected official, refuses to help individuals and small businesses understand how best to deal with Obamacare and take advantage of its benefits.”….Two-thirds of all voters (including 60% of undecided voters) have an unfavorable impression of “a Republican who repeatedly voted to cut the funding needed to effectively implement the law, and refuses to provide information to employers and individuals about it.”
No wonder the GOP’s anti-Obamacare shenanigans aren’t helping their brand with the public. The point is underscored by another finding from the Hart survey:
Our generic congressional trial heat shows a relatively narrow, three-point advantage for Democratic candidates (44%) over Republicans (41%) nationwide. However, when the choice in the 2014 election is presented as “a Democrat who favors fixing and improving Obamacare rather than repealing it altogether” versus “a Republican who wants to totally repeal Obamacare,” voters favor the Democratic candidate (51%) over the Republican candidate (36%) by 15 percentage points.
Thus it would appear that the more the GOP pursues their anti-Obamacare crusade, the more damage they do to themselves. Indeed, when combined with their destructive opposition to immigration reform, popular gun regulations, and any expanded efforts to revive the economy, it’s hard to think of a group of voters they could alienate who they haven’t.
I am usually torn between wanting to encourage the Republicans to continue on in this way until they disappear forever, and wanting to correct their stupidity so that we can get something done in this country.
However now that Palin has signed on I am simply anxious to see the size and depth of the crater left when this implodes and destroys them both.
