Eye Recommend --- In Kentucky, Health Law Helps Voters, But Saps Votes

Kentucky resident Robin Evans

IN KENTUCKY, HEALTH LAW HELPS VOTERS, BUT SAPS VOTES, by Abby Goodnough -- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/us/politics/kentucky-elections-obama-health-care-act.html?ref=us&_r=0

Why Mitch McConnell will probably be back in Washington next year:

"The Affordable Care Act allowed Robin Evans, an eBay warehouse packer earning $9 an hour, to sign up for Medicaid this year.  She is being treated for high blood pressure and Graves' disease, an autoimmune disorder, after years of going uninsured and rarely seeing doctors.

'I'm tickled to death with it,' Ms. Evans, 49, said of her new coverage as she walked around the Kentucky State Fair recently with her daughter, who also qualified for Medicaid under the law. "It's helped me out a bunch."

But Ms. Evans scowled at the mention of President Obama--'Nobody don't care for nobody no more, and I think he's got a lot to do with that,' she explained--and said she would vote this fall for Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and minority leader, who is fond of saying the health care law should be 'pulled out root and branch.'

Ms. Evans said she did not want the law repealed but had too many overall reservations about Democrats to switch her vote.  'Born and raised Republican,' she said of herself.  'I ain't planning on changing now.'...

...Why would people like Ms,Evans who are benefiting from the law vote for candidates who would dismantle it?  Gov. Steven L. Beshear, one of the few Democrats forcefully promoting the law here, said many were driven by a dislike of Mr. Obama...

...'The campaign by the Affordable Care Act's critics against it has been very effective in demonizing the phrase Obamacare and anything to do with the president,' said Mr. Beshear...'I think you find a reluctance on the part of people, even though the law is benefiting them, to publicly acknowledge it.'

Interest groups and candidates, including Mr. McConnell, have run more than 10,000 broadcast television spots here since January 2013 that mention the law in a negative way...

...At the state fair's annual ham breakfast, Mr, Beshear tried to humanize the law, describing how several farmers in attendance had signed up for the new coverage and how one had used it to check out a spot that turned out to be skin cancer.

'It's not about the president,' he told the crowd of 1,600, who did not applaud once during the six minutes he spent discussing the law.  'It's about you.  It's about your families. It's about your children.'"

What the Republican Party is doing to the people they have pledged to serve is unconscionable. 

They have created an atmosphere of hate against the President and his health care law so pervasive that people are willing to shoot themselves in the foot and smile when it has to be amputated.  It makes no sense whatsoever; but, at the cost of being called politically incorrect, you can't fix stupid--which just may be what the GOP is counting on.