You're confounding the current eGOP, as in Establishment GOP, which controls the nominating process, with many of its "completely nuts" elected officials and its base, who've many times in the last few decades declined to (re)elect RINOs, i.e. G. H. W. Bush in 1992, Bob "Tax Collector for the Welfare State" Dole in 1996, McCain, who had a hereditary vicious tempter which he turned on the base after not getting the 2000 nomination.

And Romney, the sort of NE liberal/progressive Republican (granted, an old wing of the party, see e.g. Rockefeller vs. Goldwater in 1964, or Teddy Roosevelt after the previous turn of the century) who could win in overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic Massachusetts. It was the only state in the entire freaking nation to vote for McGovern in 1972 (along with D.C.) after all, "acid, amnesty and abortion", baby!

(Amnesty for Vietnam era draft dodgers, delivered by Carter.)

Seriously, what? What sane definition of "Republican" could possibly exclude Mitt Romney? How the hell am I supposed to know who you do and do not include in "Republican" if that's how you're going to be?

Again, you claim "bipartisanship" for Obamacare without evidence of votes or the signing of legislation.

As for "sane" definitions, with the end of various systems of party discipline, anyone who calls themselves a Republican or Democrat is one. But that doesn't mean you can't distinguish between different types. Again, go back to after the turn of the century, the feud and eventual party split between progressive Theodore Roosevelt and conservative William Howard Taft, which gave us Woodrow Wilson.

I also said it's "as bi-partisan as you can get". That's not a very high bar to clear, I hope you realize. My point is not that there's some imaginary outpouring of Republican support for the idea, but simply that Republican opposition to it is not rooted in any alternative. Obamacare is as bi-partisan as you can get. There is nothing that would be more bi-partisan than that, unless you count "nothing" as something.

Based on history, based on candidates, based on policy, Republicans should support Obamacare. It's their plan! But they don't, because they've become a mindless opposition. Their policy is whatever the Democrats are against. They no longer define themselves, but merely are the negative of their opponents.

That's all I'm saying. There's no alternative health care form that both parties could get behind. Obamacare is the closest you can get in the current climate. The idea that we should delay Obamacare in order to figure out a true bi-partisan reform bill is fantasy, because there is none.

There are obviously people here who both simultaneously think ACA might not be a positive public policy and are not mindless. Some of them might even be registered Republicans. Your constant repetition of the claim that voting for Mitt Romney was somehow an endorsement of a national version of Romneycare when the candidate himself explicitly campaigned on the opposite is, not to put too fine a point on it, silly. It is 100% consistent with federalist principles to believe that Romneycare might be great for the voters of MA, single payer might be great for the voters of VT, but that Obamacare is bad for the voters of the USA. It's also not inconsistent to believe that Romneycare was a horrible idea, but that Romney was still preferable to the alternative Republican candidates and/or preferable to President Obama.

Not so much silly, but an example of revolutionary truth.

We "mindless" opponents of ACA are wedded to bourgeois truth.

[Much omitted.]

This will not end well.