The GOP Plan To Achieve GOP Defeat in 2018, 2020

 I don't get it.

The GOP is constructing a complete failure for themselves in the coming elections. It's a genius of a plan if their intention is to wipe their party out. 

I just don't get why they are apparently deliberately plotting their own electoral suicide. But first, let's look at what that suicide plan is.

The centerpiece of their plan is their latest health insurance bill, which cuts a huge amount out of Medicaid so as to give that money to the rich as a tax cut. 

So guess who depends heavily on Medicaid? Seniors. The same seniors who always vote and mostly vote Republican. Without the senior vote, the GOP is toast.

Many of these same seniors are in nursing homes, their residency paid for by Medicaid. They are the same seniors who need other vital care that's not covered by Medicare but is covered by Medicaid, e.g. dentures, hearing aids, eyeglasses.

How can the GOP hang onto these voters when it takes away their nursing homes and other vital medical needs? As the GOP pushes the grandmas out of the nursing homes and over the cliff in their wheelchairs, those grannies will be angrily shaking their fists at the GOP as they go flying over the edge. 

But wait! There's even more ingenious election idiocy from the GOP. 

Everybody knows the GOP can't win the White House without certain states in the electoral college, such as Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and — as of 2016 — Michigan and Wisconsin. Now get this. The GOP's  health insurance reform plan whacks 22 million people off their present insurance under Obamacare. And guess where most of these people live.

Unbelievably the biggest hits will be taken in those same states that control the electoral college outcome! Most of those key states will have their uninsured rate near-double or more! 

Take a look at this excellent depiction of what will happen: 
Which states would be hit hardest by Obamacare repeal. Pennsylvania, for example, will have 1,221,000 more uninsured.  That's a  a 197% increase. Michigan: 1,014,000, also a 197% increase. And so on down the list.

Besides the Rust Belt states, look at what what happens to Kentucky and West Virginia! They get hit the hardest. Harder than 48 other states! Kentucky has its uninsured people increase by 231%! That makes it second only to West Virginia in loss of health care for its people. 

And guess which state Senator Mitch McConnell represents. 

Kentucky! 

This is a strange way to "represent" a state, isn't it?

These people who will be kicked off their health insurance are in effect being murdered. When reckless disregard becomes too egregious it changes from gross negligence to murder because the intent to kill can be presumed from the high degree of disregard of the inflicted danger. 

Do we know people die from lack of medical care? Yes, we do. Can we predict the elderly will die if kicked out of nursing homes? 

Well, duh!

In 2009 Harvard estimated that 45,000 people died each year for lack of health insurance in the years following the Clinton failure to enact coverage. These dead included a family friend whose life could have been saved if he had had insurance.  He was only in his 40's. We didn't know his plight or would have helped. He was too proud to ask, I guess. New study finds 45,000 deaths annually linked to lack of ...

Then Obamacare came along and began to save people, not just from death, but from unneccesary, untreated pain and suffering. 

People could get help.

And now a majority of Americans like Obamacare, according to polls. More than half of Americans approve of Obamacare now, Gallup ...

By contrast, the GOP health insurance bill to replace Obamacare has polled this past week at approval rates of 12%, 16%, and 17%. In fact, if you add the low approval rate of the GOP bill to Trump's low approval rate, even the combined total is less than the approval rate for Obamacare standing alone.

I worked for 30 years in politics to help people. Much of this work was in running campaigns. In fact, I may have been the first woman to ever run a Congressional campaign. We lost that one, though we did get some benefits for the people, e.g. a hundred housing units for farmworkers who were living in hovels and a federal law to prohibit  mass arrest and detention without due process. Pretty good stuff. Still, we didn't win the election. 

But we didn't engineer our own loss like these Republicans are apparently now doing. We fought like hell to win even in a district that was "unwinnable" according to the registration numbers. 

So I don't get it. 

Why are the Republicans setting themselves up to lose the White House and the House of Representatives? Instead of going for broke like we did a half-century ago, they are breaking all hope of winning.

Am I missing something here? 

They can't all be as nutsy as the ostensible head of their party. Is there actually some dark, hidden goal in their apparent craziness?

Anyway, Happy Fourth of July! And don't worry. The Great Experiment will go on! Neither Trump nor the ruthlessness of Mitch McConnell's GOP will destroy this country. As Lincoln said, America is the last best hope of humankind. 

It shall not perish from the earth.