I’ve felt for a while now that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), once a lonely crank, now has the soul of the Republican Party in his briefcase. So his reaction to the Supreme Court decision on ACA is of more than passing interest:
This government takeover of health care remains as destructive, unsustainable, and unconstitutional as it was the day it was passed, unread, by a since-fired congressional majority. Now as then, our first step toward real health care reform and economic renewal remains Obamacare’s full repeal, down to the last letter and punctuation mark.
I urge every governor to stop implementing the health care exchanges that would help implement the harmful effects of this misguided law. Americans have loudly rejected this federal takeover of health care, and governors should join with the people and reject its implementation.
You can only imagine how conservatives (including DeMint) would react if a Democratic public official uttered this sort of incendiary talk about federal legislation Republicans supported. But it’s a token of the radicalism that has seized the GOP, and particularly its southern wing–viz., DeMint’s governor, Nikki Haley, trying to run unions out of her state. Speaking of Nikki, is anyone really confident that she’d ignore DeMint and not only implement the exchanges but accept the Medicaid money ACA authorized to accomplish much of its coverage expansion in states like South Carolina? Sure, the super-matched Medicaid money is a “sweet deal” for anyone thinking rationally, but that is not the beast we are dealing with in places like the Palmetto State.
