In case you missed it, Rep. Dave Joyce is just the latest example of vulnerable House Republicans misrepresenting or hiding the terrible votes they’ve taken on healthcare.
“Vulnerable House Republicans can’t shed their shameful records, built over many years, of working to increase healthcare premiums, charge seniors more for prescription drugs, and scrap protections for people with preexisting conditions like cancer, asthma and diabetes. There is not a single House Republican getting a free pass on healthcare in the midterms.” – DCCC Spokesman Tyler Law
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The Health 202: This Republican congressman released an ad touting his vote against Obamacare repeal. Yes, against. | Washington Post
By Colby Itkowitz
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-health-202/2018/08/21/the-health-202-this-republican-congressman-released-an-ad-touting-his-vote-against-obamacare-repeal-yes-against/5b7adf101b326b7234392a5f/?utm_term=.801a7c10ab4f
A Republican congressman in a competitive re-election race is campaigning on his vote against repealing Obamacare.
How’s that for a twist?
In a year that finds Republicans largely ceding health care as a talking point to Democrats, Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio) has taken a different approach. Rather than ignore the issue, Joyce released a television ad that ran in his northeast Ohio district touting his opposition to his party’s attempt to kill the Affordable Care Act last year.
[…] Yet Joyce, a three-term congressman in Ohio’s 14th district, previously voted 31 times to repeal the ACA — something that until this year was bulleted on his campaign website. Now, his site doesn’t mention Obamacare at all. But the campaign hasn’t publicized the ad either, and it does not appear anywhere across Joyce’s social media.
This delicate dance represents the dynamic for Republicans in vulnerable districts as they attempt to balance their past disdain for the ACA with its present popularity.
“It says an awful lot about the political climate that Joyce is running such an ad in a district Trump won by double digits,” said David Wasserman, House editor at the Cook Political Report. “It speaks to voters’ antipathy toward the Republican Party’s all-or-nothing approach.”
Across congressional races, Republicans who once campaigned on repealing Obamacare are largely ignoring it this cycle. As our colleague Paige Winfield Cunningham reported in April, Rep. Mike Bishop (R-Mich.) actually scrubbed his campaign website of any mention of the 2010 health-care law. So far, only 15 percent of pro-GOP House campaign ads even mention health care, while a whooping 63 percent pro-Democrat House ads do, according to an analysis by Kantar Media/CMAG with Wesleyan Media Project.
[…] There is not a single House Republican getting a free pass on healthcare in the midterms,” said Tyler Law, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Rep. Joyce, who goes by “JustDave” on Twitter, is considered a moderate in the type of barely-red district Democrats are longing to take over. While the Cook Political Report currently rates his seat “likely Republican” and the district went for Trump over Hillary Clinton by 11 points in 2016, it’s within reach for Democrats. Barack Obama only lost it by 3 points in 2012 and by less than half a point in 2008.
Joyce is running against Betsy Rader, a female candidate with a deep health-care resume, having worked as a senior counsel at the Cleveland Clinic and at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. While Joyce is, for now, the presumed favorite, running an ad so blatantly bucking his party and President Trump suggests some anxiety, especially given the near-win of a Democrat in a much redder Ohio district in a special election this month.