Firesaw: The Health Care Repeal Fantasy

Ramesh Ponnuru has a long piece in National Review arguing that Republicans can indeed repeal the Affordable Care Act. The piece isn't totally unconvincing as a potential long-shot scenario. But it does suffer from a couple severe weaknesses. First, it dwells on the possibilities of gaining a House majority, but fails to grapple with the more important question of how Republicans could obtain 60 Senate votes. Since every Senate Democrat voted for the Affordable Care Act, Republicans will need to gain 19 Senate seats, in addition to the House and White House, to repeal the law. A related problem is that, as Republican Senate numbers increase, they become increasingly dependent upon winning purple and blue states, where Senators would be reluctant to endorse repeal. (Republican Senate candidates in Delaware and Illinois are already backing slowly toward the door.) Getting 60 GOP Senators by 2013 would be hard, and getting 60 who endorse repeal harder still.

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