Joshua Tucker digs into whether repealing health-care reform will actually be a winning issue for Republicans, an important thing to assess, because it's the only real thing they ran on in 2010. Tucker looks at data from a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll published by CNN and finds that there's general support for the idea of repealing health care, but things get more complicated when you get down to the law's individual components. More complicated in that a clear majority supports keeping every component except the individual mandate, which is the only portion insurance companies really care about. That puts Republicans in a bit of a bind.
My assessment is that repealing health care reform is going to turn out to be a lot like cutting spending: everyone is in favor of cutting spending generally, but no one wants to cut spending for particular programs. Thus the Republicans face a dilemma. Politically, they are probably best served by continuing to rail against health care, but not actually trying to make unpopular changes to the program. However, that will open them up to charges of not actually fulfilling campaign promises. So the best strategy may be to overreach, propose plans that could never work (e.g., repealing mandates without doing anything else), count on the Senate to block or Obama to veto, and therefore keep the issue alive in its general form for the 2012 elections. Gridlock anyone?
Tucker's not the first to say this, and he probably won't be the last, but it's worth pointing out, over and over again, that the actual health-care reform law isn't truly unpopular.
-- Monica Potts
