Thread by @chrislhayes

Since McConnell et al are trying to lie about their own position on the ACA and the entire GOP is committed to denying what they're doing, let's take a quick tour down memory lane, shall we?

The ACA passed in 2010 with not a single GOP vote in the senate. Basically unprecedented for major legislation *as Republicans were constantly hammering home.*

They kept saying "This is not bi-partisan; we hate it! We want it gone!"

As soon as it passed, the GOP focused their entire message on repealing the law, and then voted over ***60 times*** to repeal it once they took control of the house.
They also initiated a complete government shutdown to unsuccessfully force the issue.

Meanwhile, various conservative lawyers and Republican Attorneys General started suing to strike down the law in whole or part. Many of these efforts seemed, at the outset, kooky and legally unsound, but they reliably found sympathetic hearings from Republican-appointed judges.

Three cases made it all the way to SCOTUS, and in one of them conservatives won, when all conservative justices were joined by two of the liberals to strike down the law's provisions to essentially force states to expand Medicaid.

In NFIB v Sebelius, argued at the same time, all but one of the court's conservative justices found the law's insurance mandate unconstitutional. It was only saved by Roberts finding it constitutional under the taxing authority. A very near miss.

Then 3 years later another case comes before SCOTUS seeking to cripple a key provision that allows subsidies in a number of state insurance exchanges. When first introduced, the lawsuit is largely dimissed as nutty, but lo and behold, conservative judges actually cotton to it!

Again, the *majority of the court's conservatives" including the one Judge Barrett explicitly cites as her legal inspiration, Scalia, says the this vital part of the ACA should be thrown out. But Roberts and Kennedy join the liberals to uphold it.

Then Republicans get control of both houses of congress in 2017, along with the WH, and the *very first thing they do* is attempt to repeal the ACA. They make a big concerted legislative effort that flames out; people think repeal efforts are dead. But not so! They're committed!

So a few months later they come back at it again, pass it in the house and come a vote shy in the Senate, thanks to Murkowski, Collins and McCain's infamous thumbs down. Are conservatives done trying to kill this thing yet?

Of course not! They strip the insurance mandate penalty in their big tax cut bill, and then Republican AG's use that to file in court with a *FACIALLY LUDICROUS ARGUMENT* that the absence of a mandate tax penalty means the entire law must be scrapped. All of it!

Not only that! The DOJ joins the suit! Says, yes, please, we need to destroy this entire law right now because there is now a zero $ tax penalty. (What, you ask, is the harm if the tax is $0? Don't worry your pretty little head!)

When this suit is first introduced, a familiar pattern: legal experts across the spectrum saying it's laughably bad, and yet, guess what!? A GOP-appointed federal judge likes the argument and strikes down the law. Surpise!

Then two GOP-appointed judges in the 5th circuit fail to reverse the district court ruling - despite the fact it's utterly nuts and lawless - so that it is now teed up for... The Supreme Court.

And now there's a Republican judge, who's been vetted thoroughly by the Federalist Society, who clerked for Scalia and says he's a model for her own method of judicial reasoning. Who is on the record criticizing Roberts in NFIB for stretching to make the law workable.

"But how dare you say this woman who we absolutely are ecstatic about would strike down the ACA?! What a preposterous notion?!"

Like the last ten years haven't happened! Like they haven't tried to kill the thing over and over and over and over again.

I don't know, ultimately, how ACB might rule on this case, mostly because as @RameshPonnuru and @jadler1969 rightly point out, it's a garbage case that shouldn't prevail. But the current GOP posture, to piss on us and tell us it's raining, is wildly insulting.

The GOP wants to destroy the ACA. This is not a secret.
Democrats want to preserve and expand it.

No matter how much the GOP tries to have its cake and eat it too - to gut the law while claiming they're not -- Americans aren't actually that stupid.