Will the Right Sabotage the ObamaCare Replacement Debate?

[Geee]

Commentary Magazine:

There is no question that the GOP’s prospective standard-bearers have been thrown off course, off message, and off brand by the unforeseen entry of Donald Trump into the race. But while the bull in the china shop is busily shattering porcelain to the sound of the multitudes’ cheers, some of the Republican Party’s 2016 hopefuls are valiantly attempting to get their campaigns back on track. It would be an unrivaled tragedy if they were thwarted in that effort by their erstwhile conservative allies.

 

As the Republican presidential primary race lumbers into the fall, the 2016 candidates have been forced by the contest’s frontrunner to litigate the validity of the first section of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that grants birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants born in America. It is an academic and politically injurious debate over the revision of an amendment that serves as the jurisprudential basis for a substantial number of the country’s anti-discrimination precedents. Meanwhile, a variety of more on-message items of value to conservative voters are going overlooked.

 

Hillary Clinton’s email scandal continues to expand and slowly swamp her presidential ambitions. The disastrous Iran nuclear deal has lost the support of another Democratic senator, former ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez. Even the Planned Parenthood videos that once imperiled that organization’s federal subsidies are going overlooked. All of these more pressing matters, none of which will receive their due attention in the political press without consistent Republican pressure, have slid from the front pages.

 

But a handful of GOP hopefuls have admirably attempted to regain control of the narrative, and they are doing so with bold proposals aimed at repealing and replacing ObamaCare.