Afternoon Must-Read: Scott Lemieux: What Happens if the Court Goes ACA Troofer?
The disconnect between who takes actions in Washington and who receives political responsibility whenever anything goes wrong continues to be a big problem with our modern system of governance. Another possible example for Norm Ornstein and company to chew over:
…(and were right to do so, because the point of winning elections is to do stuff), Republicans who are opposed to the idea of helping people without medical insurance will be willing to take some political risk to severely damage the ACA…. That said, I’m not sure how much political risk there will be. At the federal level… Obama is likely to take the primary blame for the failure of ‘Obamacare’ no matter who’s really responsible….
At the state level… it will… be Republican governments that are unwilling to set up exchanges, and this will hurt some middle class people. But I’m still not sure what the political hit will be… [if] low-information voters… correctly assess blame for a problem that still only affects a minority of voters…. I think Republicans would be able to stand by and do nothing as a Republicans in black robes wreck the exchanges and largely get away with it.