(04-04-2018 12:21 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  Study suggests that people have few problems interacting and associating with people who differ from them on issues but attach a political label to the other person that is different from the one you identify with then there are problems.
Donald Trump managed to flip a party from support of free trade to opposition to it by merely taking the opposite side of the issue. Democrats, meanwhile, mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for calling Russia the greatest geopolitical adversary of the United States, but now have flipped and see Russia as exactly that. Regarding health care, the structure of the Affordable Care Act was initially devised by the conservative Heritage Foundation and implemented in Massachusetts as “Romneycare.” Once it became Obamacare, the Republican team leaders deemed it bad, and thus it became bad.
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/03/poli...epublican/

I've noted this phenomenon several times.

I do take issue with the Obamacare comments. The Heritage proposal was a loose adaptation of Bismarck principles. I would kinda sorta go along as far as the idea that Romneycare borrowed some ideas from the Heritage, but Romneycare was a product of compromise between a heavily democrat legislature and republican Romney. And Obamacare may ave retained some words (exchanges, mandates) from earlier proposals, but not with the same meanings, and is not really the same concept. Obamacare could be turned into a Bismarck system, but right now it isn't. It leaves millions uninsured. It ratchets up the price of health insurance to unaffordable levels for millions. It contains far more layers of government bureaucracy, and imposes additional ones, on our health care system than any Bismarck system. It excludes or prohibits several elements that were essential to republicans. The Heritage proposal was a 4-page pamphlet, Romneycare was a 100-page bill, Obamacare was a 2000-page bill. Those are not the same.