Read carefully these comments by House Speaker John Boehner on 'Obamacare,' the policy that Republicans say is destroying America by attempting to extend health coverage to some 46-million uninsured people:
"House Republicans will continue to work to repeal this law and protect families and small businesses from its harmful consequences," Mr. Boehner said in a statement this week. "We will also continue our work to replace this fundamentally flawed law with patient-centred solutions focusing on lowering health care costs and protecting jobs."
Did you catch that? Mr. Boehner, the de facto leader of the opposition to President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in the Senate, is promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which will determine Mr. Obama's legacy and potentially reshape America's social contract.
The "Party of No" has put itself in a bit of bind. The Republicans have a very real shot at taking control of the Senate in November's midterm elections. Larry Sabato at the University of Virginia predicts a photo finish, and Nate Silver, the statistics savant who correctly predicted Mr. Obama's victory in 2012, says Republicans will prevail. But Mr. Boehner's pairing of a negative verb – repeal – with a positive verb – replace – hints at recognition that a majority of voters may be getting over their visceral initial reactions to Obamacare.
It would be a stretch to predict an enthusiastic embrace of the health law over the months ahead, but indifference is a strong possibility. Indifferent voters reflect a very different challenge for Republicans than do angry ones, as they may reserve their ballots for a politician who is proposing to build, not just destroy.
"I'm confident it's going to be an entirely different issue next November than it was last November," Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear told me in an interview at the state Capitol in Frankfort, Ky. last month. "And here's the reason: 80 per cent of the American public aren't affected by [Obamacare] one way or the other. But they're only finding out about that now."
Mr. Boehner's party has two things going for it: history, which suggests the president's party fairs poorly mid-cycle; and the Democratic Party's embarrassment over Obamacare, the rollout of which the administration botched horribly last fall even though the legislation was passed in 2010.
The Republican candidate for governor in Virginia was losing badly until Healthcare.gov – the federal website where most uninsured Americans were mandated to go to sign up for coverage – crashed out of the gate. Ken Cuccinelli changed tack and started hammering Obamacare as much as he did his Democratic opponent, Terry MacAuliffe.
Mr. Cuccinelli's strategy almost worked, as he nearly beat Mr. MacAuliffe despite being heavily outspent. National party leaders sensed a winning formula. Republicans everywhere have been promising loudly to scrap Mr. Obama's health law since the Virginia race, trapping the President and Democratic lawmakers in an echo chamber of ineptitude and failure. Polls consistently show that a small majority – generally about 55 per cent or less – of Americans dislike the law.
Mr. Beshear is in a unique position to gauge the public mood.
He is the Democratic governor of the home state of two high-profile Obamacare critics: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and another senator, Rand Paul, an early favourite for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Yes, Mr. Beshear is a partisan, but he also leads a Republican state, enabling him to judge what the broad public is willing to accept.
States had the option of setting up their own health-insure exchanges or having the federal government do it for them. Kentucky set up its own, and avoided the technical breakdowns that plagued the federal system. About half the 640,000 Kentuckians who were previously uninsured now are covered.
"If around the country, they are anything like they are here, they like what they find" when they seek out a health plan, Mr. Beshear said. "People are excited here."
"Excited" might be hyperbole, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the violent rejection of Obamacare that Republicans need to coast to victory in November isn't happening. A Bloomberg News poll early March found that 64 per cent Americans support Obamacare outright or favour small changes. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama announced in the Rose Garden that more than seven-million people had signed up for health insurance on Healthcare.gov, exceeding expectations that had been lowered because of the website's disastrous beginnings.
"The debate over repealing this law is over," Mr. Obama said.
Those numbers will be picked apart over the days ahead. It is one thing to sign up, and another to actually pay. It also is unclear how many of those signees are healthy people, a key figure because their contributions offset the burden on insurance companies of the less healthy who will be drawing on health insurance for the first time in their lives. The goal of insuring every American remains a distant one.
But even if Obamacare cannot yet be called a success, it is becoming increasingly difficult to label it a failure. And that's why Republicans are subtly changing their tactics. The American Institute of Economic Research estimates that 50-million Americans will pay higher premiums as a result of the health law, a big number.
But 30-million people will pay lower premiums and 230-million will experience little or no change. Winning those votes will require more than a promise to repeal Obamacare. Republicans know this; they just aren't emphasizing it yet.