Since the no-so epic 2012 Election Day defeat, in which the GOP ran away from Obamacare for obvious reasons, many conservatives have been shouting at the top of our lungs for a message change.
Actually, it was more reverting back to the actual message conservative message, rather than an actual change. Now, it may appear as if the Republican Party is actually listening. Sometimes we get bogged down in the weeds with all of the numbers and specifics, but right or wrong, Americans simply do not like to vote for rich people who appear to be protecting their friends, i.e., John Kerry and Mitt Romney.
The latest failure of Obamacare that the White House conceded by delaying the individual mandate for big business was a golden opportunity to make that messaging change, and they took it. The Obama administration is rightfully taking fire from all ends on this cronyism. It is the progressive ideology that is big business friendly, not conservatism, but a rather incredible amount of hypocrisy during the financial crisis allowed the Democrats to define the GOP as big business, or pro-Wall Street.
That image fit neatly into the image of Bush Republicans who are also friendly to big oil, but that is not reflective of the ideology – at its core – at all. If we didn’t know better, and if it didn’t concede supporting the president, we could easily misconstrue the letter from the unions to Obama as a conservative grievance.
The letter, signed by Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, UFCW President Joseph Hansen and UNITE-HERE President D. Taylor, comes after companies have cut worker hours in order to avoid reaching the 50 full-time employee Obamacare threshold requiring a business to provide health insurance through government exchanges. Union leaders are reminding Democrats, not Republicans, about why they originally supported a healthcare overhaul and are now expressing buyer’s remorse.
When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.
Like millions of other Americans, our members are front-line workers in the American economy. We have been strong supporters of the notion that all Americans should have access to quality, affordable health care. We have also been strong supporters of you. In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure this vision.
Now this vision has come back to haunt us.
Since the ACA was enacted, we have been bringing our deep concerns to the Administration, seeking reasonable regulatory interpretations to the statute that would help prevent the destruction of non-profit health plans. As you both know first-hand, our persuasive arguments have been disregarded and met with a stone wall by the White House and the pertinent agencies. This is especially stinging because other stakeholders have repeatedly received successful interpretations for their respective grievances. Most disconcerting of course is last week’s huge accommodation for the employer community—extending the statutorily mandated “December 31, 2013” deadline for the employer mandate and penalties.
Time is running out: Congress wrote this law; we voted for you. We have a problem; you need to fix it. The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe. Perverse incentives are already creating nightmare scenarios.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have been asked to move forward with these supposed “fixes” to the law, but what they really request is that they issue unions more waivers. That is cronyism 101, and in the past Republicans have been successful at exploiting the disconnect between union leaders and members by painting the leaders as cronies themselves. They are not going to win any popularity contests themselves, as confidence in organized labor had fallen again this year.
Obamacare almost single-handedly gave the Republican Party the 2010 midterm victory, and its absence from the 2012 campaign was a missed opportunity to paint the Democratic Party as the true cronies. The Republican Party will always be a second rate party until they make these bold distinctions, which of course will require the party looks more like Paul and Lee, and a lot less like Graham and McCain.
