Fed up with GOP bill, ACA’s loudest foes lowering their voices
Members of Congress returning home for the July 4 recess were met with rallies, sit-ins and Independence Day demonstrators as activists on the left intensified their push to defeat Republican legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
The groups on the right that once fueled the party’s anti-Obamacare fervor might as well have been on vacation.
“Not too many are focused on health care currently,” said Levi Russell, a spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and funded by the Koch brothers.
He said the organization’s state chapters were holding town hall-style meetings about veterans’ concerns during recess week. Two other major groups, FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Patriots, said they were planning rallies in August and September that would push for an overhaul of the tax code; Americans for Prosperity was already running ads toward that.
Since summer 2009, when Tea Party activists angrily confronted Democrats who were drafting the Affordable Care Act, the Republican Party has been driven and defined by outrage over it. But now, with the Republican health care legislation hanging in the balance, President Donald Trump and congressional leaders are getting little support from what were once the loudest anti-Obamacare voices. The lack of grass-roots enthusiasm will make it even harder for the party’s Senate leaders to line up votes for their troubled bill when they return Monday.
Activists on the right said they felt betrayed by the Republicans they helped elect, who pledged that when they had a Republican president they would repeal the act.
“This is not anywhere close to that, and I think it has left a number of conservative activists saying I’m not advocating for this,” said David Bozell, president of ForAmerica, an organization founded in 2010 to help spread conservative ideas on social media.
Public opinion polls show support for repeal-and-replace slipping among the groups that once demanded it. Support for the Republicans’ efforts among Trump supporters, while still 55 percent, dropped 14 percentage points since May, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in mid-June. Among Republicans overall, support had dropped 11 points, to 56 percent.