OPINION: ‘ObamaCare Republicans’ betrayed the GOP base — we won’t forget it

It appears Republicans in Congress have had a reverse epiphany.  Now that all the stars have aligned and they have a president who will actually sign a bill that will effect real change for people forced to live under the increasing financial burdens of ObamaCare — which, if you’ve forgotten, don’t include members of Congress — they seem to be saying “never mind.”

Perhaps, from inside their Beltway bubble, they’re convinced that the people who voted them into office either won’t notice or will forget their transgression by the next election cycle.  Six of the Republicans who voted to repeal ObamaCare in 2015 inexplicably voted against it in 2017.

{mosads}What Republicans still don’t get is they won in 2016 because of Donald Trump, not in spite of him. According to Gallup, the average job approval rating among Republicans for the GOP-controlled Congress in 2015-2016 was 14 percent, dipping as low as 8 percent in 2015. Compare that with the 55 percent GOP approval rating of Congress in 2003-2006, the last time Republicans had majorities in both houses. 

The vote for a Republican majority in Congress last November was not a vote for business as usual, do-nothing Republican agenda.  The only reason the Republicans control the House and Senate today is because the American people who elected President Trump believed Republicans in Congress would back his agenda.  

They are now demonstrating that they’re not even willing to do that.

In the real world, if someone hires you to provide a service, whether you are an electrician or an advertising executive, and the service you provide is the opposite of the service you promised to provide, you will no longer have a job.  So, why are Republicans behaving as if they want Trump, and the country, to fail?

In 2013 Jonathan Gruber, one of President Obama’s consultants on ObamaCare, said the “stupidity of the American people” helped get ObamaCare passed.

Are the Republicans taking a page out of the Democrats’ playbook and now counting on the alleged “stupidity of the American people” to give them a pass and retain their majority?

When ObamaCare passed in 2010, the American people were sold a box of lies, including “if you like your healthcare plan you can keep it,” leading them to believe this bill was going to make their lives better.

Fast-forward to 2017, ObamaCare is no longer some abstract idea passed by members of Congress who couldn’t even be bothered to read the bill because, after all, they weren’t going to have to live under it.

While members of Congress and their staff still don’t have to live under ObamaCare, the rest of the country is living under it, and their lives are not better.

The law is a disaster.  This year premiums are rising an average of 25 percent and in 31 states they are rising by double digits.

It was Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AL) who derided rising premiums in 2015 as her rationale for voting for repeal back then. Yet she just voted against repeal.

Even some Democrats have distanced themselves from ObamaCare.  Last year Minnesota Democrat Governor Mark Dayton, once an ObamaCare advocate, said that it is no longer affordable due to huge premium increases.

Who would’ve thought after Trump’s election that we’d see Democratic governors opposing ObamaCare and GOP Senators supporting it?  Don’t be shocked to see primary challengers to GOP incumbent Senate and House members next year branding those incumbents as “ObamaCare Republicans.”  Good luck shedding that label after the debacle we’ve all just witnessed.

The American people are not stupid and they are paying attention like never before, because this has directly affected their wallets and their families like never before.

This is not 2003, and Congress’ approval rating is way south of 55 percent. Outside of the Beltway bubble, in the rest of the country where real life happens and elections are decided, they will not forget the people they sent to Washington to support President Trump have forgotten them, because they are living with the direct effects of their inaction everyday.

Lauren DeBellis Appell was deputy press secretary for Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-Pa.) successful 2000 re-election campaign, as well as assistant communications director for the Senate Republican Policy Committee (2001-2003).

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.