Amid early indicators that President Obama’s health care victory could shift public opinion back his way, Republicans face a daunting challenge to wrest some political advantage from defeat.
A new USA Today/Gallup poll found 49 percent said passage of the bill was a good thing, to 40 percent who called it a bad thing. A Bloomberg News poll taken at the same time showed the opposite — 50 percent opposed the bill while 38 percent favored it.
Obama, relishing his win from a White House bill signing to a speech at the Interior Department touting the bill, scoffed at efforts by the GOP to undermine the Democrats’ win.
“I heard one of the Republican leaders say this was going to be Armageddon,” Obama said. “Well, two months from now you can check it out — we’ll look around, and we’ll see.”
Republicans, meanwhile, stepped up their rhetoric against the new measure, building on initial vows to repeal the plan with a new promise to “repeal and replace” it.
“We will have, one after another, a whole series of very substantive, appropriate amendments which will try to significantly improve what is a fundamentally bad bill so that the American people can see the problems here,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican.
The revised strategy reflects a growing concern among Republicans that in order to outperform Democrats in November, the party must put forward a solid policy agenda — rather than just operating as obstructionists.
At the same time, Obama also faces a new political challenge with the bill’s passage. Having prevailed on a measure that polls showed a majority of Americans opposed, he now has to convince them he was right.
To that end, the president is repeating a list of talking points about what the measure will achieve right away: tax credits, a ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and for dropping coverage for those who get sick, and closing the Medicare doughnut hole.
Democrats took a big risk in passing the unpopular health care reform measure, which they did in part based on Obama’s assurances that once the public understood the bill, they would come to embrace it.
With other policy battles looming over climate, immigration reform and more, Republicans are sounding worried about the precedent set by the health care vote, and the majority party’s willingness to buck public opinion.
“In this great democracy we have, the voters, the people, always get the final say-so, and I think this is very important to remember as the president intends to take a victory lap on this bill,” said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. “He’s going to take a victory lap on a bill that the American people don’t want, because they know we can’t afford it.”
