they couldn't even repeal the aca
It’s hard for me to see the ACA as anything other than a clear unequivocal win for Republicans.
They snookered the democrats into adopting a Heritage Foundation Health platform, and parlayed it into a near decade long majority in Congress, then successfully watered it down to remove all the penalties, reintroduced junk insurance through executive orders (which you can buy with government subsidies now), successfully neutered the best part of the law through a partisan Supreme Court, and removed all the cost saving measures, and turned it introduced block grant waivers.
So now you have a law which barely 50% of Americans even like, insurance premiums are still rising faster than wages, and 10 years later deductibles have grown 2x faster than inflation.
they ran against it for about a decade, shut down the government in 2013 to try to stop it being implemented, passed a billion symbolic "repeal" bills when they knew it would die in the senate or get vetoed, and when they got control of both houses of congress they couldn't repeal it despite leadership making it a top priority. then they lost the house after the other party crushed them with negative ads over it
if the dems fucked up something that bad it would be exhibit a in the case for why they suck
I will say that my cynical mind holds two opinions of the parties:
1) the Dems are somewhat sincere about wanting to do the things they actually propose. Like when they introduce pay go rules or whatever, they think they are doing good policy. Some of their ideas are good, some bad, but they are (most of the time) honestly trying to govern.
2) the Republicans have a lot of issues that really only exist to maintain power, and promote their real agenda which is staying in power, and secondarily, maintaining low taxes and regulatory burden on their donors, and perhaps maintain some kind of white supremacy social framework. Most of the other issues are just things they say to rile up their base.
I think that many Republican politicians, in their heart of hearts, really give a shit about the ACA one way or another. They just want to make sure that the rich share no burden of funding it. Similarly, I don’t think they really care that much about abortion or the 2nd amendment, those things are just useful issues to rile up deadenders to come to the polls. It’s why they hold so many performative votes that are going nowhere.
Some of them, I think, would prefer that some of these arguments carry on indefinitely, because they are good at ginning up the base during elections.
