Pro-Obamacare Ohio GOP Campaigns On Standing Up to Obamacare

Party-endorsed Ohio Republican Party (ORP) State Central Committee candidates are being promoted with inadvertently hilarious ORP flyers asserting, "It Takes a STRONG Republican Party to Stand Up to Obamacare."

ORP recognizes criticism of Obamacare as a campaign tool, but don’t ask Party officials about the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

Last August when Media Trackers reached out to more than 30 county Republican Party chairs to gauge local support for Medicaid expansion, orders went out from Columbus to "beware of enemy blogger trying to rope Republican leaders into an anti-Kasich blog-fest."

In a "RepublicanResponseToDemocratBlogger" document, ORP parroted Gov. Kasich’s talking points on Medicaid expansion, touting the policy as "the pragmatic and logical approach for Ohio to lessen the negative impact of Obamacare."

Not including billions in new federal spending, the Obamacare Medicaid expansion is projected to cost Ohio taxpayers more than $600,000,000 per year by 2022.

Kasich embraced Obamacare by including its optional Medicaid expansion in his budget proposal last February. Republicans in both the Ohio House and Ohio Senate stripped the expansion from the budget — but no matter the gulf between stated principles and supported policy, ORP leadership serves Gov. Kasich.

Even when Kasich vetoed the Republican-dominated General Assembly’s ban on Medicaid expansion, ORP backed the governor. ORP did nothing "to STOP Obamacare" as Kasich circumvented the legislature, unilaterally expanding Medicaid and turning to the pseudo-legislative Ohio Controlling Board for appropriation of Obamacare funds.

President Obama has cited Kasich’s Medicaid expansion as a major Obamacare success story, and Kasich’s "compassionate conservative" rhetoric has helped Democrats and big-government Republicans in other states push the Obamacare expansion.

While Gov. Kasich continues to lie about how billions in new entitlement benefits will be paid for, ORP remains supportive of using promised Obamacare money to put hundreds of thousands of able-bodied childless adults on Medicaid.

This story was originally published at Media Trackers.

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