Yesterday, Ohio governor John Kasich briefly made news when the Associated Press quoted him saying that repeal of Obamacare was simply “not gonna happen,” and adding that “the opposition to it was really either political or ideological,” and in either case insufficiently attuned to the “real improvements in people’s lives.” Liberals pounced, conservatives groaned, and Kasich quickly went into damage control mode, explaining that he was only talking about the Medicaid expansion, which he had already explicitly supported and implemented, and not the rest of the law, which he still officially wants to (say it with me) repealandreplace.
That last is the official position, of course, of the entire Republican Party, which currently enjoys, per my colleagues at The Upshot, a 66 percent chance of seizing a Senate majority in two weeks time. But the controversy around Kasich’s comments are a useful reminder that not only is there no Republican consensus on how to actually replace the health care law, but almost no G.O.P. Senate candidates are actually campaigning on a politically credible replacement plan — with “politically credible” defined, for reasons I’ve elaborated on before, as “not rolling coverage levels back toward the pre-Obamacare status quo.”
The one major exception is Ed Gillespie, running against Mark Warner in Virginia, whose plan Ramesh Ponnuru has commented on and defended here and here. (Since Gillespie’s background is in what I’ve called the “donorist” wing of the party, which does not always distinguish itself in pushing middle-class-friendly economic policy, he deserves particular credit for taking the policy leap.) But Gillespie is also, per current polling, unlikely to join a Republican Senate majority next year, whereas many G.O.P. candidates — the potential Majority Leader included — who have hemmed and hawed or talked in anti-Obamacare boilerplate and vague generalities when asked about health care policy are more likely to pull their races out. Which will be seen by some, no doubt, as vindicating the risk-averse, somewhat cynical approach to health policy that Republicans have taken throughout the health care debate …
… except, of course, that in this cycle that debate is happening against the backdrop of a political map that heavily favors the G.O.P., whereas in 2016 (as in 2012) the map will be different, tougher, and the health care law (while no doubt still unpopular overall) will be more locked-in, more a part of people’s ordinary experience, and the promise of full repeal will look even sketchier than it does now. At which point a Republican Party that wants to be competitive nationally will start to feel a lot of pressure (probably not quite enough to counteract the influence of the primary electorate, but we’ll see) to drift toward something like Kasich’s (quite popular, in a purple state) position, which basically amounts to “if you like the single-payer part of Obamacare, you can keep the single-payer part of Obamacare, and let’s talk about the other stuff later.”
For conservatives who don’t want their party to gradually, eventually, inevitably end up taking roughly that position in national elections, then, there’s a pretty narrow window to rally around something like the Gillespie approach instead. That window was open in this campaign; I think it will be open again in 2016. After that, though, the political risks (already real enough) associated with backing a legitimate Obamacare alternative will rise apace, the downsides of calling for outright repeal will likewise increase, and Republicans running for office outside red states will probably just end up endorsing the views that Ohio’s popular governor is dancing around right now.
Of course events might intervene, but for now anti-Obamacare but reform-minded conservatives should be rooting for Gillespie to pull off a miracle comeback … because a party that cannot imitate his Obamacre position today will almost certainly accept John Kasich’s position tomorrow.