With Republican attorneys general prepared to file lawsuits hours after health care reform passed, some of the GOP's top voices are calling for a repeal of President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement.
Both lines of attack, while possibly useful rallying cries, are long shots. Repeal would, at the very least, probably require that Republicans take both houses of Congress with sufficient majorities to override a presidential veto. Legal challenges directed against the insurance mandates in the bill are speculative and would probably take years to reach the Supreme Court.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney called for a repeal in a post on National Review's “The Corner,” writing: “President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation — rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better.”
Romney, one of the frontrunners to challenge Obama in 2012, later in the post called for a repeal of what he framed as a “historic usurpation of the legislative process.”
Romney had been laying low during much of the health care debate – since as governor he provided his residents with near universal coverage using many of the same policies Democrats enacted – making his call for repeal particularly notable.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in a column for Human Events swore that health care reform “will not stand.”
“This is not the end of the fight it is the beginning of the fight,” he wrote.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele trashed the passage of health care as “the first vote for the end of representative government” in a statement Sunday night. And during an earlier interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Steele said the Republican message for the fall is “absolutely” about repealing the bill. - Politico Story
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