After this week’s midterm election turned out favorably for the GOP, the question on everyone’s mind is: what now?

We’re still waiting for the GOP to come out with plans and decisions on what its policy goals include but one thing that keeps getting mentioned is a curtailing or a destruction of Obamacare. On Thursday, Speaker of the House John Boehner said “At some point next year we’ll move to replace Obamacare,” and is planning on kicking off the “Repeal Obamacare” fight again.

The GOP shouldn’t try to obliterate Obamacare. It’s a useless endeavor that may only hurt the Republican Party more than help us and there are more productive things the party can do with it’s new momentum.

There are some pretty powerful obstacles to Obamacare being cut. For one, President Barack Obama still has the power of the veto and overturning a presidential veto is incredibly difficult. The last veto override was when Congress overrode former President George W. Bush’s veto on a bill that contained $23 billion dollars in water projects in 2007.

Obama won’t let his pet project get attacked by the GOP and the Democrats may back him. With the election being over, many Democrats don’t have a reason to distance themselves from Obama. This won’t be an easy fight if Republicans were to attack Obamacare.

This is also an old fight; the GOP has tried to repeal Obamacare 50 times. Ten million Americans are now also covered under Obamacare with that number expanding to 22 million in 2020. The GOP will lose a lot of thunder trying to take healthcare from this many people, especially if they don’t have a plan to replace Obamacare with something.

It’s a waste of time and polls show that Americans are in favor of many parts of Obamacare. There are many more pressing and important issues the GOP can focus on with this new revival of our political firepower, like repealing the Patriot Act which infringes on Americans’ civil liberties or creating pro-family legislature that can actually help grow American families, such as paid parental leave.

If anything, the GOP should look to tweak it and fix the parts of the legislation that need work, allowing it to take credit for the successful implementation of Obamacare. We didn’t win this Nov. 4 solely because our ideology of small government and liberty. We won because of widespread apathy that affected more Democrat voting groups — young people, minorities — than our voting base.

If political experts are correct, this situation isn’t a permanent one, our win was legitimate but not built on anything but a base of apathy. We’ve only won the battle and we can’t get cocky trying to fight a Democratic base. The Democrats certainly lost but our position isn’t secure enough for a direct assault on Obamacare.

Repealing Obamacare could inflame American voters and might affect their decision in in 2016. Let’s try not to cut off our nose to spite Obama’s face. Don’t waste time trying to obliterate Obamacare when we should take action in areas that will only legitimize the Republican Party’s victory.

Rami Jackson is a junior entrepreneurship and policy studies major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @IsRamicJ.

Published on November 10, 2014 at 12:01 am