Obamacare Political Disaster - For The GOP

attribution: REUTERS

Jed Lewison

January 27, 2014

Ask any Republican in Congress and they'll tell you that Obamacare is an enormous political disaster. Well, maybe they're right:

Which party could do a better job of dealing with health care?

Democratic: 45
Republican: 38

Those numbers come from the latest Pew national survey, and the only sense in which they are a disaster is that despite betting everything on Obamacare repeal, Republicans still trail Democrats on dealing with health care. The only positive gloss you could put on the numbers for Republicans is that before health care reform became a partisan dividing line, Democrats used to have a 20+ point advantage. But that was when reform was an abstract notion — now it's a concrete reality.

In September, Pew showed Republicans with a one-point advantage on health care. And now, despite the "rocky rollout," Democrats have the edge again. I wouldn't be surprised if that earlier poll wasn't a bit of an outlier, but the key point is this: Despite Republican predictions that the implementation of Obamacare would be a political disaster for Democrats, the reality has been anything but.