Donald Trump apparently saw a Wall Street Journal op-ed about the Affordable Care Act over the weekend, which ended up jolting the 2024 presidential race in an unexpected way. It started with this message the former president published to his social media platform, telling Americans that he’s “seriously looking at alternatives” to “Obamacare.”
He went on to complain about Republican senators who failed to “terminate” the ACA in 2017, concluding, “[B]ut we should never give up!”
Democrats, mindful of their public advantage on health care, pounced on the opportunity. For unexplained reasons, Trump made matters a little easier for his opponents with follow-up missives in which he attacked the reform law in even more explicit terms.
What are congressional Republicans saying about all of this? Politico reported:
Former President Donald Trump’s renewed push to scrap Obamacare if he returns to the White House is falling flat with the Senate Republicans who’d have to pass it. The GOP conference is still scarred from its 2017 attempt with Trump to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which failed on the Senate floor.
The article added that Trump’s offensive against the ACA “didn’t exactly thrill GOP senators.”
“I don’t see that as being the rallying cry,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said. “I really don’t.” Sen. Chuck Grassley added, “I don’t hear any Republicans talking about it.”
For his part, Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota said, “Boy, I haven’t thought about that one in a while. I just don’t know what [Trump’s] thinking or how we would go about doing that. That fight, as you know, was six years ago now. And so, if he’s got some ideas, we’re open to them.”
As a political matter, the response is understandable. As we discussed earlier in the week, the Republicans’ 2017 effort to tear down the ACA was a disaster for the party, which Democrats exploited to help take back the…
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