Repeal

Rasmussen Reports’ latest polling of likely voters shows that, by a 10-point margin, Americans favor the repeal of Obamacare.

Obamacare makes the ’62 Mets look like the ’27 Yankees.  Since President Obama signed Obamacare into law on March 23, 2010, Rasmussen Reports has conducted 114 polls asking likely voters whether they’d prefer to keep Obamacare or repeal it.  All 114 times, voters have said they’d prefer to repeal it.  In 107 of those polls — including the one released today — Obamacare’s margin of defeat has been double-digits.

At a rally in Ohio last week, Mitt Romney said, “Obama-care is really Exhibit No. 1 of the president’s political philosophy, and that is that government knows better than people how to run your lives.” The GOP nominee added, “I don’t believe in a bigger and bigger government. .  .  . I believe in free people pursuing their dreams. I believe in freedom.”

The latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that independents overwhelmingly support the repeal of Obamacare — by 18 percentage points (55 to 37 percent) — which once again raises this question:  How can an incumbent president hope to win reelection when his centerpiece legislation is this unpopular with swing voters?

Addressing the audience at an AARP convention today, Paul Ryan declared, "The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obamacare." He explained to those in attendance how Obamacare would turn "Medicare into a piggy bank," while also putting "15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of Medicare’s future."  Ryan added, "The president doesn’t talk much about what Obamacare will really mean for seniors." Why? "People don’t like it."

The verdict now seems to be in on the Romney campaign's strategy of generally avoiding making the case against Obamacare and choosing not to make President Obama's defining legislation a defining issue in this campaign.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows that 50 percent of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare, while 41 percent oppose it. In addition to these specific tallies, Rasmussen's survey draws attention to two things.

On the Senate floor right now, just before Congress breaks away for summer recess, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is imploring Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow the full Senate to vote on Obamacare. This is the fourth time McConnell has asked Reid for a vote since the Supreme Court decide to uphold Obamacare earlier this summer, but Reid is once again expected to prevent the top Republican in the Senate from holding a vote.

Rasmussen’s latest poll of likely voters shows that there’s at least one thing that unites the vast majority of the American citizenry: the desire to see Obamacare be repealed. 

The latest CBO scoring of Obamacare, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the overhaul’s individual mandate as an allowable (although seemingly unprecedented) tax on inactivity, shows that President Obama’s centerpiece legislation would cost about $2 trillion over its real first decade (2014 through 2023).  The CBO also says that — despite its colossal cost and its unpreced

The latest polling by Rasmussen Reports shows that independents think Obamacare would raise (53 percent), rather than lower (16 percent), health costs.  They think it would reduce (50 percent), rather than improve (13 percent), the quality of health care.  They think it would raise (56 percent), rather than lower (13 percent), the deficit.  And they think it would be bad (50 percent), rather than good (29 percent), for the country.  Not surprisingly, by a 13-point margin (51 to 38 percent), they think Obamacare should be repealed.

The latest Quinnipiac poll shows that — by a 15-point margin — the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling makes voters less likely, rather than more likely, to cast their vote for President Obama. Twenty-seven percent of registered voters say that the ruling makes them “less likely” to vote for Obama, while only 12 percent say that it makes them “more likely” to do so. Only 9 percent of independents say that they are “more likely” to vote for Obama because of the ruling, compared to 27 percent who are “less likely.”