Depraved Republicans may actually be plotting to destroy themselves

What happened RawStory argues that Republicans may be damaging their own midterm prospects, but it provides no evidence of a coordinated plot to lose. Its case rests on two reported decisions shortly before the elections: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley called former special counsel Jack Smith to testify, reviving attention to January 6, while the Trump administration canceled about 315,000 Affordable Care Act marketplace enrollments covering roughly 760,000 people. According to the column, CMS said the enrollments were unauthorized, fraudulent, or associated with nonexistent individuals and estimated $2.2 billion in subsidy savings. The piece also cites a Congressional Budget Office projection that previously enacted health-policy changes would increase the number of uninsured Americans by about 10 million, including 7.5 million people affected through Medicaid. It does not supply enough detail to assess the enrollment cancellations individually or establish that eligible beneficiaries were knowingly removed. Power made the choices The decisive actors are not voters, health-insurance customers, or even Republican campaign strategists. Grassley controlled the committee proceeding described in the column. The Trump administration and CMS controlled the enrollment action. Congress and the president wielded the legislative power behind the projected coverage losses. Calling those outcomes “self-sabotage” centers the electoral discomfort of the governing party rather than the people subject to its decisions. Losing an election would be a consequence for Republican politicians. Losing health coverage is a consequence for households. Those are not comparable injuries, and only one side possessed the authority to impose the material one. A hearing that served its target Republican senators reportedly used Smith’s appearance to pursue claims that his investigations reflected a vendetta against Donald Trump. RawStory says they failed to provoke damaging testimony and instead renewed public attention to January 6 and Trump’s conduct. That may have been tactically inept, but ineptitude is not the only relevant measure. The hearing also gave senators an institutional stage from which to recast scrutiny of Trump as misconduct by the prosecutor. Even when that performance fails to produce a useful admission, it advances a familiar inversion: the official who investigated alleged wrongdoing becomes the suspect, while the conduct under investigation recedes behind accusations of bias. Coverage is not a campaign prop The column’s framing weakens when it treats the timing of the ACA cancellations as the central offense. If the administration improperly terminated eligible coverage, the problem is the termination itself—not that Republicans did it at an inconvenient point in the election calendar. If CMS correctly removed fraudulent or invalid enrollments, that also requires evidence beyond ridicule of the agency’s explanation. RawStory does not provide the records needed to settle that question. Its strongest grounded point is narrower: an executive agency exercised power over coverage used by roughly 760,000 people while claiming substantial savings, amid broader policy changes projected to increase uninsurance. That deserves scrutiny of criteria, notice, appeals, and error rates. Electoral speculation cannot substitute for that accounting. Cruelty disguised as puzzlement The “why now?” framing treats Republican conduct as an inexplicable lapse in political judgment. But policies can be unpopular and still serve the priorities of the officials enacting them. A government may value reducing subsidy spending, restricting eligibility, rewarding aligned constituencies, or demonstrating ideological resolve more than avoiding every adverse headline. Calling this confusion can therefore become its own misdirection. It shifts attention from identifiable decisions to amateur psychology about whether Republicans have become “tone deaf.” The relevant questions are concrete: who authorized the removals, what standards were used, who can appeal, and who bears the cost when the government gets it wrong? The system behind the spectacle The larger pattern is governance filtered through campaign analysis. A congressional hearing becomes interesting because it might hurt Republicans. Health coverage becomes important because canceling it might alienate voters. Institutional power disappears behind a story about messaging. That lens lets officials evade the proper measure of their conduct. The central issue is not whether Republicans are plotting to destroy themselves; RawStory establishes no such plot. It is whether those holding federal power can use investigations to protect political allies and administrative machinery to withdraw public benefits, while coverage reduces the consequences to a question of electoral cleverness. Thanks to Raw Story Source: Depraved Republicans may actually be plotting to destroy themselves This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit paulstsmith.substack.com