{"id":10288,"date":"2014-01-29T19:19:10","date_gmt":"2014-01-29T19:19:10","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2014-01-29T19:19:10","modified_gmt":"2014-01-29T19:19:10","slug":"gop_missing_obamacare_opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2014\/01\/29\/gop_missing_obamacare_opportunity\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Missing Obamacare Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

RUSH: The Republican response. You know, the Republican response is a no-win. Any response is a no-win. There\u2019s nothing you can do. It\u2019s television. It\u2019s optics. There\u2019s just no way. You can have the nicest looking room and fireplace in the world, and nothing is gonna compare to a packed House chamber no matter who the president is, no matter what he\u2019s thought of. So it\u2019s a tough thing to overcome. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s another thing here that — just so there\u2019s no confusion, I like Cathy McMorris Rodgers. I think she\u2019s fantastic, and I really hope — well, what I want to say is, I really hope that she doesn\u2019t get totally co-opted by the establishment. I really don\u2019t want to say it that way, but I guess I just did. Great choice, I think. But here\u2019s the problem. In the real world the Republican Party, no matter who they put in there, is not going to actually close the loop because of the president\u2019s race. <\/line><\/p>\n

What is it that\u2019s roiling the country right now? It\u2019s Obamacare<\/a>. And jobs, but there\u2019s a fail-safe for that. It\u2019s called unemployment compensation. If you are cancelled, you know, the Democrat Party has, for decades, made people think that without health insurance you may as well be without oxygen. And they\u2019ve done a great job politically in convincing people they can\u2019t do without that. They\u2019ve got people living in perpetual fear of getting sick. Getting sick now equals potential bankruptcy, losing everything. And I don\u2019t mean that as just a half-baked description. <\/p>\n

When you fear that you might lose everything no matter how much or little it is, that is one of the most frightening things that can happen to you. And the Democrat Party has convinced people that not having health insurance puts them dangerously close to the reality that simply getting sick, which is something you can\u2019t avoid, everybody\u2019s gonna get sick, everybody\u2019s gonna die, everybody\u2019s gonna get something someday. You can\u2019t avoid that. And the Democrats have made people think that when it happens to you, if you don\u2019t have insurance, you will go bankrupt. You will lose everything. And, as a result, it is the most important personal thing. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why this Obamacare mess is as big as it is. That is why the three years of lies this president told people about keeping their doctor if they like him, and keeping their insurance plan if they like it, their costs were gonna go down, their access was going to increase, premiums were gonna come down, copays were gonna come down, out of pocket was gonna come down, and it\u2019s just the opposite. Premiums are doubling. The other aspects are tripling. The copay is going up, out of pocket is going up. Nothing the president said was truthful. And now these cancellations, people are being cancelled for real. And there isn\u2019t anywhere to go that\u2019s affordable. <\/p>\n

HealthCare.gov does not work, even after you go there and sign up. Now you\u2019re told you may not be signed up. They may not have a way to prove it. It is an abject mess. I\u2019m telling you, this has the people of this country — the media is never gonna tell you how much. They can\u2019t afford to. This is Obama\u2019s big signature issue. But this is huge. And it is deeply personal and it has people scared. They were expecting the opposite. In the midst of all this, they are now figuring out that Obama is incompetent. He claims he didn\u2019t know the website wasn\u2019t ready? There\u2019s nothing, there\u2019s not one thing in Obamacare, there\u2019s not one thing in American health care right now that is inspiring confidence or making people feel positive. <\/line><\/p>\n

It is a huge, huge deal, and as a result, that is a huge, huge opportunity for the Republicans that they are totally missing because they are afraid to go there, and they are afraid to go there because the president is African-American, and they are afraid to criticize him on anything he\u2019s done because they don\u2019t want to be called racists, sexists, bigots, or anything of the sort. <\/p>\n

Now, hindsight, everybody can do it. You watch somebody do something and the next day you say you can do it better. That\u2019s easy to do, and I\u2019m not doing that with Cathy McMorris Rodgers. But, to me, if you\u2019re going to do a Republican response, I would think that one of the points that you would nail, you would tell people that you know what a disaster Obamacare is, you know, your own version of you feel their pain. And then you would make the point, you would drill home the point, that not one Republican signed, voted for it. You make the point that the Republicans tried as hard as they could to stop it. <\/p>\n

You simply remind people what the Republican Party\u2019s position on this was all during the process. You make the point and you take the occasion of your response to the State of the Union. It doesn\u2019t matter what Obama has said about it. Obviously in the State of the Union he\u2019s gonna praise it, talk about how great it is. But as a Republican, you have to know that the country is disillusioned and scared and mad and feeling all kinds of paranoia about it, plus anger. <\/p>\n

You\u2019ve got to dissociate yourself from it. You\u2019ve got to make sure that people know you had nothing to do with it and that you want to get rid of it. And you have a plan to replace it with something, to get rid of it and either go back to the way it was or turn it over to real experts to fix or what have you. But you\u2019ve got to make the point that you didn\u2019t have any role in it. <\/p>\n

Let me go to the audio sound bites just to illustrate something. Frank Luntz folks group on Fox after the State of the Coup address. This is during Megyn Kelly\u2019s program, and we got two of these. This is Luntz. I thought Luntz retired and then sold his company and moved to Hollywood, but here he is back on Fox with his focus group. Anyway, this is the first of the two sound bites.<\/p>\n

LUNTZ: How many of you so far have a favorable impression of the president\u2019s health care plan? Raise your hands if you\u2019re favorable towards it. Only one. But you voted for him. Some of you.<\/line><\/p>\n

MAN: The promise is great. The execution is miserable.<\/p>\n

LUNTZ: So when he talks about it, you still dial it down?<\/p>\n

MAN: Execution failed, horribly.<\/p>\n

LUNTZ: So you\u2019re telling me it\u2019s not the style, it\u2019s the substance?<\/p>\n

MAN: Not just the execution. In fact, we found that now we can\u2019t keep our own doctor, a lot of choices have been removed, a lot of people\u2019s premiums have gone up. Nothing is what we expected. We were told we could keep our own health plan and now that\u2019s proved to be an outright lie.<\/p>\n

RUSH: See? This is made to order for the Republicans to speed in there. Now, and I\u2019m not saying — you could do it in a wrong way, you could do it in a way that would come off as childish and Bart Simpson-like. You don\u2019t want to do that. You just want to, in a mature, honest way tell people — I would even go so far as to say: “We knew it wasn\u2019t gonna work, but we didn\u2019t have the votes to stop it, and not one of us voted for this. We did everything we could to warn people that this was going to be the result, because the government doesn\u2019t know what it\u2019s doing. The government cannot run this for you, and we don\u2019t want to. We want to turn it back to the experts.” Yeah, it\u2019s a little risky because people hate insurance companies and so forth, but there\u2019s a great opportunity. <\/p>\n

The Republicans are just not gonna take it because of the president\u2019s race. That\u2019s why the Democrats hope it\u2019s gonna be Hillary, and if not Hillary, maybe a Hispanic, because the next first ever female president, same protection. Any criticism will be sexist. If it\u2019s an Hispanic, first Hispanic-American president, any criticism will be racist again. This is how they silence the opposition, silence the critics. But to me, this is a fundamental point that Republicans have to make over and over and over again, and you can\u2019t assume that people know it. Here\u2019s the next bite with the Luntz focus group.<\/line>