Have Republicans Given Up On Attacking Obamacare? Doubtful.

In a bit of dubious cherry-picking, a new Bloomberg piece concludes that the Affordable Care Act is losing its effectiveness as a political issue for Republicans. Working off this premise, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post reasons that this tells us Obamacare is “disappearing” as a major issue. And Paul Krugman followed up with his characteristic level-headed analysis.

How do we know the end is near-ish? Well, so many Americans are “benefiting from the law,” theorizes Heidi Przybyla, that political ads are simply not doing the job anymore. This news is somewhat unexpected – and unpersuasive – when you consider a Kaiser Family Foundation poll recently found that only 15 percent of Americans believe Obamacare has directly helped them, while 28 percent say it has directly hurt them. (Fifty-six percent say it has had no effect on their lives.)

Somewhat more convincingly, Przybyla offers this bit of evidence: “Those seeking to unseat the U.S. Senate incumbent in North Carolina,” she writes, “have cut in half the portion of their top issue ads citing Obamacare, a sign that the party’s favorite attack against Democrats is losing its punch.” Then again, that’s quite an extrapolation, as well – especially when you consider that in her very own story Przybyla tells us that GOP groups have plans to re-focus on ACA as soon as premium increases for 2015 are announced. Like any issue, the political impact of Obamacare is hitched to events surrounding the law. An ebb is not a capitulation. And there will be more Obamacare events.

But even if there weren’t, consider that a quarter of all political ads running in North Carolina attack Obamacare specifically. This seems to suggest that it’s still a comparatively “major issue.” Or, let’s put it this way: Is there any other law in the United States that eats up more political space?

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