You underestimate the power of propaganda. Even if the repeal wouldn’t take effect until 2017, it will be THE major campaign issue. And that message will be that Dems are needed to restore/protect/reform sensibly because the evil Reps will let it all go away. That message will be omnipresent. Grannies will be pushed over cliffs again, poor children will suffer on television.

If Obama vetoes, the issue frames as Dems refuse to do anything to fix health care. I would rather fight on that field.

Imagine for a moment that Obama did sign the bill. The insurance market is thrown into chaos during an election year. ….

Nothing would take effect next year.

So the rest of your thesis falls utterly flat.

As for chaos — it’s ALREADY HERE.

The numbers don’t add up. So the industry is backing away.

Like Romneycare, all of the original assumptions were bogus.

All in all, we better hope Obama vetoes it.

“Congress has to lead the way in the development of a rational system that is not destructive of the health care system”

In your dreams. The main thing that is killing the health care system is that from 1/3 to 2/3 (in some locations) of patients pay the doctors and hospitals nothing. It’s outright theft, pure and simple, but our government enables it. We need to do two things to stop this theft: 1. Eliminate “anchor babies” altogether (and/or secure the border), and 2. Restate EMTALA to emphasize that you only get treatment in a true emergency, and it’s not “free”. You have to arrange a payment plan with the hospital when you leave. The law won’t let college students default on their loans, and the same should apply to “free” medical care in the ER.

Unfortunately, nobody in congress is willing to stand up and tell the 47% , “Pay for your own damn medical care!” so as I see it, the medical system in America is screwed no matter what.

Tort reform and buying insurance over state lines is just tinkering around the edges of the problem.

“Reconciliation is a legislative process of the United States Senate intended to allow consideration of a budget bill with debate limited to twenty hours under Senate rules.”

This Republican majority Congress could have sent far more bills to Obama had not the GOP recently caved to Obama on the budget bill.

Instead of selectively defunding the entitlement and regulatory State, they caved into compliance with the democrats.

The cloture process must be thrown away because it is only useful when both parties abide by the rules and place the good of the nation above ideology. Clearly, neither is the case with the democrats.

The purpose of sending bills to Obama that we know will be vetoed is twofold; a) it formally places before the nation, in writing, conservative alternatives to the democrats prescriptions and narrative and b) it defuses the democrat’s charge that the GOP is obstructionist.

Currently, the GOP are co-conspirators in the destruction of America. Desperate to retain power, they are throwing the base a bone to appease a fed up base.

So, you believe they passed it because they know Obama would never sign it.

That seems absurd to me, even for someone who thinks the GOP are generally spineless collaborators. They have not been collaborators on Obamacare.

As far as Obamacare goes, if you look at the history of its passage in House and Senate, there is little question that at the time the GOP did whatever was possible to stop it. They were outmaneuvered and outnumbered by the left, but it’s not as though they didn’t try everything available to them, including the Scott Brown election.

Since then, they’ve never shown any particular love of the bill or desire to keep it. You or I may quarrel with them in the sense of they’re not doing everything you might like them to have done, but it always was absolutely inevitable that Obama would veto.

So, are you really suggesting that if Obama wasn’t committed to veto it, they would not have passed this, because they really want Obamacare to stay as is? I’m not a big fan of the GOP in Congress, but I have seen zero evidence of this. I think the weight of the evidence is that, if there were a Republican president who would approve the bill, they would definitely get rid of Obamacare as is and almost certainly pass some other more market-oriented form of health care reform.

You write, “The obvious question is why the same rationale Sen. Sessions advances does not also apply to the plethora of bills that a truly conservative GOP would be sending to Obama.

Of course Sessions rationale does apply.”

What’s this “of course” business? I’d say, “Of course, Sessions’ rationale does NOT apply.”

The only reason that this bill could get past the 40-vote cloture threshhold was that it could be passed by reconciliation because of its nature. Most bills don’t fall under the reconciliation process.

Now, you might say they should jettison the cloture process; throw it away. I have argued the pros and cons of that in earlier posts, for example here. At this point, I’m slightly in favor of their throwing it away, but only slightly for reasons suggested in that post (for example, it’s a huge step and they are giving up something that might come in useful later on, and only gaining the ability to send bills to Obama for him to veto, which would be another form of kabuki theater).

But no, in order to pass most of the bills you’re talking about, “the same rationale” as this one does not apply. It’s a different rationale.

Of course Sessions rationale does apply.

The GOP’s behavior reveals their motivations.

The ‘desperation of hope’ is the motivating factor for those conservatives who cling to the illusion that eventualy, somehow, the GOP will awaken.

But they cannot accept that their status, money & power will ever fail to protect them from consequence. That insulation allows them to tell themselves that denial of reality equals protection from reality’s consequences.