Conservatives did not abhor the principles underlying the Affordable Care Act until Obama espoused them. It was a conservative theory to begin with. The liberal/progressive theory was and still is single payer. Obama trashed the single payer option in order to try to placate the conservatives.

The Republican position has consistently to oppose any Obama plan, regardless of its merits or its conservative basis. That is not an insane position, given the 1990s, when Clinton adopted conservative positions, got them passed, and bolstered the Democrat party. McConnell and crew did not want to give Obama the chance to employ trianglization and have a rehash of the 1990s. And I guess we should be glad of that, because the Republican strategy in gave us an electable W in 2000, non-cooperation gave them Trump/Cruz. Not that the Democrats are dancing in the street with the prospect of Bill Clinton returning to the White House with no responsibilities.

Mike. When the ACA passed, there were 60 Democrats in the Senate. Republicans had no chance to stop it. Had the Republicans wanted, they could have put in some things that would have made it more palatable. That is what happened with the Social Security Act, i.e., conservatives abhorred it and won some significant victories in limiting its scope. I think one might look at it as damage control.

Conservatives should feel grateful that the Democrats did not do in 2009 and 2010 what Republicans have done with their supermajorities in places such as Kansas and Wisconsin. If they had, the arguments over the ACA would be the least of the Republcans’ worries. One might argue that doing so would have been political suicide. But with the Republican takeover of the Senate and House, it is hard to figure out how much worse it could have gotten (I guess Obama could have lost in 2012, but that would have been the absolute worst).

In other words, If the Republicans would just do what the Democrats want, everything would be fine.

The Republicans would shoot themselves in the foot IF they monkeyed with Obamacare, a poorly conceived and executed disaster that, as of this moment, has no Republican fingerprints on it. Not yet, anyway.

Sequester

But the Republican party remains intransigent. On the one hand, sticking to your guns is a good thing. On the other hand, it increases the chance of shooting yourself in the foot.

Because it wouldn’t protect most of the jobs. It’s not just a matter of total budget. Each job needs to be evaluated on the value that individual job brings vs the cost. Raise the minimum wage too high and some jobs aren’t worth the cost of having them done at all.