Conservative columnist and pundit George Will on Wednesday compared Obamacare to the Fugitive Slave Act and segregation to demonstrate the “bruising, untidy, utterly Democratic” process of changing laws.
In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition,” host Steve Inskeep asked Will about President Barack Obama’s argument that Republicans are short-circuiting the system by using government funding and the debt ceiling as leverage to dismantle Obamacare, rather than repealing the law outright.
“How does this short-circuit the system?” Will said. “I hear Democrats say, ‘The Affordable Care Act is the law,’ as though we’re supposed to genuflect at that sunburst of insight and move on. Well, the Fugitive Slave Act was the law, separate but equal was the law, lots of things are the law and then we change them.”
Will said that one party using the debt ceiling as leverage to extract concessions from another is “not novel,” but said it’s unlikely Republicans could use that strategy to thwart Obamacare.
“It wouldn’t work. A tactic is supposed to have at least an articulable path to victory and success, and I don’t see it.”
