Ryan Says Obamacare Is Around for Good if Hillary Clinton Wins

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HuffPo’s Jeffrey Young passes along a radio interview of Paul Ryan:

Obamacare doesn’t get repealed, likely ever, if Hillary wins….Agree?

Yes. Yes, I do agree….All of us have basically gotten to consensus on what our plan is, but we have to win an election to put it in place.

OK, that’s good to hear. Except for one thing: remember what Ryan’s predecessor said a couple of days after the 2012 election? Diane Sawyer asked John Boehner if he still planned to repeal Obamacare:

I think the election changes that. It’s pretty clear the president was reelected. Obamacare is the law of the land.

As I recall, Boehner was immediately savaged for saying this, and within a few months House Republican passed yet another Obamacare repeal. Since then they’ve voted to repeal Obamacare nearly a dozen times or so, depending on how you count. The most recent attempt was in February of this year.

If Ryan is smart, he’ll call it quits on Obamacare repeal and work instead on finding places where he can horsetrade with Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately, I don’t know if Ryan is smart. Nor do I know if his caucus will allow him to move on even if he wants to. We’ll see.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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