Republicans Love Obamacare. They Just Don’t Know It.

It has become commonplace to hear Republicans eagerly supporting positions that are damaging to their own lives for no other reason than that President Obama supports them. Although there are millions of unemployed Republicans in this country, they cheer when Congressional Republicans block the American Jobs Act which would give a lot of them jobs, they applaud the constant giveaways to the richest Americans even though their own tax burdens continue to increase. And nowhere is this more evident than in the Right Wing's attacks from day one on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. They make up nonsense about the Act driving small businesses out of business, refuse to acknowledge the significant cost savings the Act represents, and even now still occasionally rant on about nonexistent "Death Panels".

Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican.

Article excerpt follows:

Republicans Love Obamacare. They Just Don’t Know It.
By Bob Cesca
June 26,2012

Yesterday, I covered the new Reuters/Ipsos poll showing the infuriatingly contradictory views on the Affordable Care Act. But what I didn’t note was that Republicans, naturally, are the most infuriatingly contradictory of bunch.

Okay, I know. Duh, right?

They’re always contradictory about everything. They hate “socialism” while sending their kids to public schools. They claim to be the party of law and order, and yet they don’t mind allowing police officers and firefighters to be sacked in the midst of their spastic Johnny-Come-Lately crush to destroy government spending (government spending was lovely during the Bush years). Ron Paul, the most conservative Republican in nearly a century and a staunch Ayn Rand libertarian, gladly accepts Social Security benefits. Mitt Romney is a computer generated spreadsheet of contradictions unraveling every time he opens his digitally-animated yammer.

In fact, it’s a miracle more Republican heads don’t explode on a daily basis out of the sheer cognitive energy generated by their gray matter racing in two separate and distinct directions.

Goddamn socialism is evil so get your government paws off my Medicare — POP! SPLAT!

Support the troops! But torture the enemy with such viciousness that it encourages the enemy to torture the troops with greater ferocity — KERPLOP!

Predictably, Republicans love the Affordable Care Act, too. They just don’t know it. And if you recite these poll results to any of them, make sure to bring goggles and a protective Gallagher-style tarp because heads will explode like the most watery summertime watermelons.

–Reuters/Ipsos found that 80 percent of self-identified Republicans support the idea of healthcare exchanges — pooling health insurance and distributing it among recipients to get lower group rates.

–Around 52 percent of Republicans like the idea of forcing corporations to offer health insurance plans to employees.

–The same percentage of Republicans support allowing young people to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26.

–Nearly 60 percent of Republicans support that idea of government subsidies to help middle and working class families pay for health insurance.

–The pre-existing conditions language in the law? A massive 78 percent of registered we-hate-Obamacare Republicans support that part of the law.

In other words, Republicans — more so than the rest of the population — hate the law, but love everything in the law.

By the way, independent swing voters? They support the above provisions by nearly unanimous margins — in the 70 and 80 percentile range.

So what does this tell us? Mainly, Republicans love the message but hate the messenger. They love what’s in the law, and probably wish that a Republican — because of the word “Republican” — invented it (like David Putty from Seinfeld, they have to support their team even if it means dressing up in stupid face makeup).

This president has bent over backwards and angered parts of his base as well as chunks of the progressive movement in order to reach out to Republicans, and, in spite of his efforts, Republicans hate him more than Satan and Stalin and the very rare demon Satanstalin combined, because AM talk radio and Fox News told them so. Hell, the individual mandate, which Republicans hated in the Reuters poll results, was invented by Republicans! But remove the name “Obama” from this legislation, and they love, love, love it by both majority and supermajority margins.

Once again, it’s all about the reasonable African American smart guy liberal. They hate that guy. But they love his healthcare reform law.

Now if by some twist of reasoning they could reach the conclusion that the man and his laws are intertwined, perhaps Republicans would be easier to deal with. But for now, they’ll continue to look like confused screechers who are incapable of realizing how buffoonishly contradictory they appear in light of polling and basic math.