Commentary: GOP its own worst enemy.

Arkansas Works fight has national attention

The next election for president will settle Obamacare's fate. Whether our state Legislature passes the Arkansas Works health care budget or not will make no difference. The only effect our Legislature's vote might have -- and it's a stretch -- is on the outcome of that race.

Love it or hate it, Arkansas' inventive use of federal health care reform money is something we're famous for. Truly or falsely, it's nationally hailed as a success. About 8 percent of the state's whole population gets health insurance from it. I'd even argue that this is the most famous thing Arkansas state government has done since then-Gov. Orval Faubus tried to block integration.

So picture how it will look if a small, purely Republican minority stops funding the whole thing in the fiscal session that began Wednesday. They would do this in defiance of the state's Republican governor and the will of most of their own fellow GOP lawmakers.

Democrats across the country would point and call this another example of how Republicans can't work together even when they have power. Every claim the governor ever made about how this will leave a quarter of a million people without insurance and throw the whole state budget into chaos will get attention.

Presidential swing states that took Medicaid expansion money are: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. I can hear the Democrats now: "If the Republican gets elected, he'll do to you what they did in Arkansas. They don't care what happens to the people who depend on this for coverage." Swing states that haven't taken the money, including Florida and Virginia, won't care if we stop funding our program.

There's an argument that taking the painful step of ending the program now will save greater grief down the road. Such arguments don't work in presidential elections. They are also not very effective whenever a large majority of the lawmakers in your own state don't buy it.

To be fair, our current fiscal session (and the special session that could follow if this dispute drags on) is very likely to be the last chance to kill the program that opponents will ever get. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, Obamacare is never going away. And right now, it's looking good for Clinton getting elected. I hasten to add, though, that "right now" is April. The election is not until November -- a lifetime in campaign terms.

Devoted anti-Obamacare Republicans are sick of being told to sacrifice their principles for the sake of the next election. They're especially tired of hearing that and then losing the next election. Their exasperation doesn't change the fact that the only thing standing between the anti-Obamacare party and the White House is their party's own division.

The GOP controls the U.S. House. They can keep control of the Senate if they unify. They control most of the state legislatures and governorships. If they win the White House, Gov. Asa Hutchinson will join other GOP governors to tell a friendly administration and Congress exactly what they want on health care policy. All Republicans need is a couple of months of unity ending in early November.

Granted, such unity is not easy to imagine. The party is preparing for a brokered convention in July. That convention will choose a presidential nominee. That choice lies between two of the biggest bulls to ever charge into a china shop. Democrats already gloat over their apparently divided, dysfunctional opponents.

I still believe two things, though. First, that it's a long time from a convention in July to an election in November. Second, that nothing could still heal the wounds, revive the spirits and close the ranks of the Republican Party like the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming president.

I don't think anything can make a swing state out of Arkansas again. Our six electoral votes will go to the Republican nominee, whoever that is. Yet killing Arkansas Works would provide another example of Republicans locking horns. That won't help the GOP cause nationally.

We could ride through the scheduled fiscal session, watch this battle drag on and then convene a special session on the brink of the end of the fiscal year on June 30. Then the state would pass or fail something -- right before the fractious Republican national convention.

Perhaps all of this is ripples in a small pond. Perhaps none of it will matter. Still, it would be nice to see one of the nation's major parties not be its own worst enemy just once.

Commentary on 04/16/2016

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