Why are the Republicans Fighting an Already Lost Battle?

I've discussed this in a Facebook thread to a smaller degree, but this bears spelling out.  Republicans know exactly why they are willing to keep the govt. shut down - they're just not willing to state the reality, for not wanting to highlight exactly how resentful they are.  So here's both parties in a nutshell:

After a pain-in-the-rear fight to pass the stimulus package (just shy of a supermajority, Republicans were no obstacle, despite the finger pointing.  This fight was entirely within the Democratic party), Obama couldn't deal with another major fight against his own people.  So when the first version of the health care bill was being discussed, and he was getting resistance from Dems once again, Obama pushed Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to use a plan backed by Republicans in the late 1980s.  

Attempting to address the desire of universal health care, a conservative think-tank called the Heritage Foundation wrote a universal health care plan that covered two main areas:  First, treating employer-provided plans and individual plans equally under the tax code.  Second was called the "Health Care Social Contract."  It was, in effect, an individual mandate on heads of households to purchase basic coverage with catastrophic stop-loss provisions for a family's total health cost expenditure.  This is a major difference between then and now, where the mandate requires purchasing comprehensive coverage.  Mitt Romney used this exact plan as the basis for Massachusetts' universal health care system.  The Heritage Foundation later removed this mandate because it had been deemed "unconstitutional."  Yes, even back then, it was unconstitutional.  And because they couldn't find a legal workaround for it, it was simply removed.  They even explained this to Mitt Romney when he was trying to set up Massachusetts' plan, but state constitutions are easier to deal with than the federal.  In the early years, RomneyCare was a success, which is why he had little room to debate against ObamaCare during the 2012 election debates.

Obama was essentially trying to counter the resistance of Democrats in Congress to his bill by appealing to moderate Republicans - that they could support his bill because they had before when it was originally introduced.  It didn't work, and Reid and Pelosi had to use every House and Senate process maneuver in the book to prevent discussion (cloture motions) or amendments.  This was the moment of Pelosi's now infamous statement that "we have to pass this bill so we can find out what's in it."  The bill got pushed through Congress with no one having had a chance to read it.  And the brunt of the debate from Republicans, and some Democrats, was the disputed constitutionality of the mandate.  The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the mandate, despite the govt. citing the Heritage Foundation's original use of it as a defense (they chose to ignore that even the HF removed it on constitutionality grounds).  Obviously this did not work.

Throughout this time,  Obama himself misled everyone about the individual mandate. He called it a "fee" for two years, because the House pointed out that it couldn't be a "tax" - any new tax is required by law to originate in the House of Representatives. So it was a fee, not a tax, a fee, over and over again a FEE. But then he got to the Supreme Court, who threw out his Commerce Clause argument for a fee on Day 1, essentially showing their hand, that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. On Day 2, it was already widely known that the Supremes were debating whether to throw out the IM alone, or throw out the bill altogether. In a last ditch effort, the govt. started calling it a tax - the only argument left that might keep the Supremes from possibly throwing the entire bill out. Even this was a broken rule - the Supreme Court is supposed to rule, by law, only on the arguments presented.  Affirmative and Negative are NOT permitted to change the argument, either in scope or in parameters.  So allowing the change to a "tax" was a direct violation by the court in itself.  Everyone voted on party lines, except John Roberts who, in the deciding vote, called it a constitutionally legal tax. He knew then he was wrong, because he admitted it. In his opinion he said straight up that the tax doesn't conform to any tax we have on the books.  He knew that all new taxes are required to originate in the House, yet he seemed to be "inventing" a nonexistent new tax to approve - something the Supreme Court is expressly forbidden from doing.  He couldn't even say WHY it was constitutional (because it wasn't), but passed it anyway. Why? The appearance of bipartisanship.  Because he knew Obama's second term was going to have a lot of third-rail issues before the court that would be voted on party lines (traditional swing vote Anthony Kennedy trends socially toward the right), giving the Democrats this faux "win" absolves him of the partisan label that would normally ensue when he's the deciding vote on several issues that may very well swing conservative.  Many believed this to be one of the most politically savvy maneuvers in the history of American government, but he literally abdicated his legal responsibility to do so.  So the deftness being praised is somewhat of a dubious honor.

Implementing the law in 2014 was three-fold:  One, Obama would never have risked his re-election chances implementing a law that could very easily backfire on him.  Two, they had to pre-charge to get some money into the system before people began receiving benefits.  Three, it gives them two years to get enough people into the system to make it nearly impossible to repeal at a later date, especially if Dems were to lose the 2016 elections.

Republicans' spite in all this is borne of a few elements that stick in their craw.  First is the notion that a plan they showed some minor support for 20 years ago, that was shot down by Democrats, magically became a good bill when Democrats decided to use it.  Second was the manner with which it was rammed through Congress (with Pelosi's statement being particularly galling).  Third was the games Obama was playing with the "fee."  Fourth was the fact that the Supremes let him get away with games, and breaking their own rules to do so.  Fifth was the unconscionable betrayal of John Roberts.  Put this all together, and you simply have Republican leadership, pushed in the back by the Tea Party, seeing fraud in almost every aspect of this law.  And they would be right - this is one of the greater frauds in the history of American government.  But they conveniently forget that they too use every fraudulent way they can think of to get what they want.  So the real deal here is that they lost - in every conceivable way, and they simply can't process that reality.  They can't even articulate just how affronted they are in losing a battle that was rife with fraud on so many levels.  The only thing they have left is spite.  And that they think they are coming from a position of power shows just how weak they really are.

What has also been lost in all this is that RomneyCare, despite it's early success, has become a fiscal failure.  So many people went off the employer-provided plans in favor of the exchange plans, that the state of Massachusetts is hemorrhaging red ink.  Their system has turned into one of the great budget busters in this country.  ObamaCare attempted to correct for this, but missed out on a key element (which tends to happen when you rush complex issues through without proper planning).  Employers are either downsizing to be able to not have to offer anything, and they have downgraded full-time workers to part-time - specifically 29.5 hours per week, as 30 is considered full-time.  I point this out because most full-time employees actually work close to 40 hours per week, not 30.  So in dropping them to 29.5, companies aren't just absolving themselves of having to provide health care, they are cutting wages by 25%.  How many people do you think can absorb a 25% loss in pay?  And depending on your wage, many people may just drop below the threshold for food stamps or other government programs.  So imagine how successful this is going to be when more than just health care could be affected.  And in all this, millions of people will still be without health care, which was the whole point of this charade.  And as for the blame game, the bill is LAW.  There's no way Republicans don't suffer heavily for this.  "Winning" is not possible.  Good or bad, this is what health care is going to be.  Instead of holding up the entire economy, we need to make sure the system works as best it can.  You can make modifications as needed.  But it's the job of Congress to pass budgets so this country can run.  320 million people are more important than a few hundred.