In one of those “election consequences by the numbers” pieces, Bloomberg Politics Greg Giroux calculates that half the Senators who voted for the Affordable Care Act of 2010 will not be in office in 2015. Of the 30 departed Obamacare supporters, only eight were actually defeated, so the implicit suggestion they’re gone for supporting the health care reform law is misleading, particularly since there were plenty of alternative reasons, including turnout patterns, for the losses that did occur.
But the count’s off anyway if we’re looking strictly at “accountabiltiy” for supporting this unbelievable socialist invasion of the private sector. Two other sitting senators, Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch, cosponsored Lincoln Chafee’s Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993, along with seventeen other Republican senators (plus two Democrats). The Chafee bill was very, very similar to Obamacare, and represents half (along with Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health plan) the GOP legacy of the Affordable Care Act (not counting the Heritage Foundation’s parenthood of the individual mandate).
It is important not to forget these things, animals.
