Republicans have forgotten why repealing Obamacare is important and they have a leader in President Trump who probably never even knew in the first place. All we are hearing now is about how Obamacare is failing, which is true, but it is not the reason why conservatives have been demanding its repeal since the day it was passed. Obamacare

At its beginning, the erroneously named “Affordable Care Act” triggered a resurgence of belief in Constitutionally limited government. Thousands if not millions of people began studying the Founding Fathers again. The people who opposed Obamacare and the underhanded way it was created and passed marched on Washington because they recognized it as a federal overreach. It was a power grab that robbed individuals of their liberty. One sixth of the American economy was being subordinated to the federal government with the promise that health care would be cheaper; better; and if you liked what you already had, it wouldn’t change for you.

All of the promises turned out—unsurprisingly—to be flagrant lies. We knew they were lies even before premiums skyrocketed and before deductibles rose so high that paying the premiums became pointless.  We knew we were lied to because one of the chief architects of the scam Jonathan Gruber told us so. Remember him? Most Republicans in D.C. apparently don’t. Here’s what he said, if you need your memory refreshed.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage, and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass,” Jonathan Gruber said at the Annual Health Economics Conference.

Gruber was a key player in developing the law, and those remarks weren’t the only time an Obama adviser suggested the administration had pulled a fast one with the law.

“They proposed it and that passed because the American voters are too stupid to understand the difference,” he said.

The root problem with Obamacare is not that it’s too expensive and insurance companies are pulling out of markets around the country. The root problem is that Obamacare is a lie and an example of the federal government seizing control of something with which they shouldn’t even be substantially involved.

Obama and his minions gave us a one size fits none system, upending the lives of people who were satisfied with their current insurance in order to allegedly provide insurance to people who couldn’t afford it. Its true purpose was federally mandating redistribution of wealth and placing bureaucratic control on decisions that should only involve a doctor and patient.

Obamacare is anti-freedom.

Republicans were angry back then—or at least they pretended to be. After Obamacare passed in the House was the only time anyone ever saw a public display of emotion from John Boehner that didn’t involve weeping like a child watching Old Yeller on Blu-Ray. But now after 8 years, the anger—whether feigned or real—has been replaced with fear. They’re afraid to repeal Obamacare. For all the talk about what an unjust piece of legislation it is, Republicans are unwilling to risk anything in order to rid us of it. They’re only timidly nibbling around the edges like they do with any other federal entitlement program. They are more worried about votes than righting a wrong.

RedState’s Susan Wright shared Senator Mike Lee’s assessment of the Senate version of the bill we’re supposed to pretend repeals Obamacare.

No, the Senate healthcare bill released yesterday does not repeal Obamacare. It doesn’t even significantly reform American healthcare.

It cuts taxes. It bails out insurance companies. It props up Obamacare through the next election. It lays out plans to slow Medicaid spending beginning in 2025, but that probably won’t happen. And it leaves in place the ham-fisted federal regulations that have driven up family health insurance premiums by 140 percent since Obamacare was implemented.

As the bill is currently drafted, I won’t vote for it.

Lee is one of the few in D.C. who still understand the problem. Most are more concerned with their reelection than they are with fixing a gargantuan screw up that doesn’t directly affect their lives. It’s one area where you have to grudgingly give Democrats some respect. They wanted Obamacare so badly that they were willing to risk losing  future elections just to get it passed. Apart from a few, the Republicans lack anything approaching that level of commitment.

The situation is made worse because Republicans nominated and succeeded in electing the worst possible candidate apart from Mitt Romney to deal with this issue. While Romney had no credibility, having implemented a similar system as the governor of Massachusetts, Donald Trump has no philosophical grounding for opposing Obamacare. The only criticism of Obamacare that Trump can muster has to do with its financial performance—practically the same attack he lamely uses on his critics. He has gone on record praising single payer healthcare and even recently said that Australian socialized medicine is superior to ours. I firmly believe that Trump understands nothing about this issue.

The leader of the Republican party is incapable of articulating a substantive argument for why Obamacare is a bad idea and an unjust law. As a result the goal is no longer repealing it but rather getting a legislative “victory” for the Republican Party and its bumbling President. What that victory entails is not really important.

While Trump supporters in the conservative media avoid dealing with Obamacare in any way that makes their leader look inept, at least Mark Levin has refused to join them on this issue. This week he asked the question our elected representatives should be asking: why should we center our entire healthcare system on a welfare program like Medicaid? He then went on to argue that both parties have now apparently given up capitalism.

“We now have two politically parties that have abandoned capitalism.

“I’m so sick of hearing these people say it’s a good first step. No, a good first step is unraveling Obamacare, not embracing it.

“A good first step – I love, ‘Oh, you know, Reagan used to say if you can get 50 percent, we’ll get the other 50 percent later.’ Yes! But he didn’t say surrender 100 percent.

“Here we have a massive new entitlement program, passed in 2010 when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate. They didn’t get a single Republican vote, and today it get votes in the House of Representatives and all but four Republican senators are lined up behind this – Obamacare.  That’s what it is, even though that fool, Obama, put out a Facebook post.

“The Democrats are laughing. They’re saying, ‘We can trash the Republicans, while at the same time, they’re enshrining Obamacare.’

“And then you have clowns on TV and radio, who pretend that they’re conservative, telling you that this is swell. ‘It’s a good first step.’

“It’s a good first step if you’re into cliffs.”

It’s not a first step. It’s a pretense.

G.K. Chesterton perhaps said it best: “Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.”

We may in fact be approaching the point of arguing that no bread is better than half a loaf.

This is all part of why I’m not wearing a political jersey anymore. I have no team. If we count all the people in Washington who still understand why getting rid of Obamacare entirely is the right thing to do, we probably don’t have enough players to fill out a roster anyway.