Fox regular Brit Hume tells Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that Republicans won't pay a political price for the recent ruling by a Texas judge that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, because there isn't going to be a "practical effect" from the ruling... for now, anyway.
December 16, 2018

After taking endless votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Republicans changed their tune during the midterm elections, pretending that they now care about whether or not people have access to health care and that pre-existing conditions are covered.

During a discussion about the ruling by a judge in Texas saying that the ACA is unconstitutional on this week's Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked his panel what the political fallout was going to be for Republicans, and regular guest Brit Hume insisted that the "political effect" would depend on the "practical effect."

HUME: Well, remember, this is a trial court judge. This is subject to the appeal to the appellate courts and perhaps onto the Supreme Court. I think it's an interesting legal argument about whether because of the invalidation of the zeroing out of the penalty was the whole law therefore is invalid.

I think there are good legal arguments on both sides of that issue, but I think we've nowhere near heard the last of this and because the judge did not issue an injunction that shuts it down, as you point out at them, Obamacare will remain in place -- what's left of Obamacare remains in place for the foreseeable future.

WALLACE: But how does it play politically given that certain parts of Obamacare that people didn't like, like the individual mandate, on the other hand, there are a lot of parts that the people did like, like pre-existing conditions, and that, according to the judges' ruling would be out too.

HUME: It would be out, but it won't be out now and it won't be out soon, in my judgment, so I think that the political effect would depend on the actual practical effect, and there is no practical effect for the time being.

So, in other words, they're all really hoping that ruling gets overturned so that 2020 isn't a bigger bloodbath for them than 2018 was. For a party that claims to be the "party of personal responsibility," they sure do love having the Democrats, or the courts, save them from themselves.

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