The never-ending Brexit follies in the U.K. have made unmistakably clear just how ragingly dysfunctional, divided and dumb that nation’s venerable Conservative Party has become. In the nearly three years since voters narrowly decreed a withdrawal from the European Union, the governing Tories have been unable to come up with a plan to put through or modify Brexit, or to mandate a re-vote.
So are they the most incompetent long-established right-wing party on the planet or what?
Actually, what.
The championship cup for the most dysfunctional, divided and dumb long-established rightwing party on the planet goes to our very own Republicans. (GOP Convention cheer: We're Number One!)
Why do the Tories come in second (and not even a close second)? Consider: They've had only two-point-something years to fail to come up with a Brexit Plan. But here in the U.S.A., President Trump announced today that Republicans would wait until after the 2020 election to unveil their substitute for the Affordable Care Act, which passed over vehement and unanimous Republican opposition in 2010.
That's a full decade during which Republicans have continually promised to come up with an alternative to the hated (by them) Obamacare but have failed to do so. Among the many reasons for this decade-long drought of ideas, there's the fact that the ACA includes almost universally popular standards for private insurers (must not charge extra for pre-existing conditions, must permit parents to include kids up to 25 on their policies), the fact that its Medicaid expansion is also very popular, and, that in its reliance on private insurers to offer publicly subsidized (when necessary) policies, it is modeled after longstanding conservative plans. Hence, the available policy space to create a rival plan that still includes the ACA's popular standards and expansions, and relies on private insurers as the ACA does, is all but non-existent.
Nonetheless, Republicans voted close to a gazillion (by actual count) times to repeal the ACA between 2011 and 2017, never mind that they never came up with their much-promised replacement. And as they never abandoned their commitment to repeal, Democrats clobbered them in the 2018 election for the threat they posed to coverage of pre-existing conditions. Chances are Democrats will still be able to do that in 2020, since there's no chance Trump will abandon his quest to undo everything that Obama accomplished.
So, the feckless, divided, brain-dead Tories? Get in line, bubs. The GOP is way ahead of you.
