Even as Republicans have begun trying to tamp down on expectations that they will repeal Obamacare if the party wins a Senate majority, one of the largest and most influential outside groups is saying “not so fast.”
Americans for Prosperity, the group funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, has focused its messaging efforts this election cycle on the ills of Obamacare — and the group’s president, Tim Phillips, says he would expect a Republican Senate to bring the law to a vote.
“Obviously we’re going to want repeal votes on Obamacare and reform votes on Obamacare,” Phillips said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“If Republicans are given a [Senate] majority next year, it will be exceedingly important for them to show results,” Phillips added. “Sometimes that’s going to mean putting a budget or a piece of legislation on the president’s desk, knowing he will most likely veto it.”
And if Republicans pick up as many as seven or eight Senate seats, Phillips said, Republicans would have a “mandate” from Americans to act.
“If they’re able to pull that off, it would be a mandate against the policies government has been pursuing for the past six years, the Obama economic agenda,” Phillips said.
But bringing major changes or a full repeal to a vote, even with such a majority, would be a high hurdle, Republican candidates and lawmakers have cautioned. This week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in an interview with Fox News that repealing the federal healthcare law would be a priority — but not necessarily feasible.
“It would take 60 votes in the Senate,” McConnell said. “No one thinks we’re going to have 60 Republicans, and it would take a presidential signature.”
A McConnell spokesman told the Washington Examiner on Thursday that McConnell would be willing to move a measure forward with 51 votes.
Among the many outside groups that have spent millions upon millions of dollars in this midterm election cycle, AFP has been among the most influential and divisive. Democratic candidates nationwide have attempted to make “Koch” a household name, and many Republican candidates will owe their victories in part to the group’s spending.
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Phillips said the group’s focus on Obamacare will have been its greatest accomplishment of all.
“It was already going to be an important issue. AFP focusing on it so aggressively, so early, definitely set the tone for the year,” Phillips said. “That’s the biggest difference we’ve made.”
According to an AP-GFK poll released this week, 78 percent of Americans view healthcare as an important issue in this election cycle, second only to the economy, which 91 percent of respondents said is important.
Although healthcare and, in particular Obamacare, have been pre-eminent issues during the midterm elections, with Republican candidates attempting to anchor the healthcare law to Democrats, Phillips said he thinks 2014 was “not an anti-Democrat year as much of an anti-Washington, D.C., year.”
“The good fortune for Republicans this year is, in most states, when voters think of Washington, they think of Democrats,” Phillips said.
But in Kansas, where Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is facing a tough re-election, or Kentucky, where McConnell has faced an aggressive challenge, Phillips added, “when people think of Washington, they think of Republicans. I think that’s one reason those races have been closer than they would normally be.”
Looking ahead to Election Day next week, Phillips offered a few predictions. He expects that Senate races in Louisiana and Georgia will extend into December and January with run-offs. And he projected that North Carolina, Iowa, Colorado and Alaska will be the races to watch.
“I think Alaska is the state where Democrats have the biggest advantage on the ground,” Phillips said. Whereas AFP has been building field operations in some states for many election cycles, Phillips said, the group only launched its Alaska operations in the spring. Meanwhile, Sen. Mark Begich, the Democratic incumbent in Alaska, has staged an ambitious field operation this year extending into some of the state’s most remote regions.
