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March 12, 2014 08:25 AM UTC

Unfettered Stephens Lashes Out At "Amycare" Detractors

  • 19 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Rep. Amy Stephens (R).
Rep. Amy Stephens (R).

As the Grand Junction Sentinel's Charles Ashby reports:

The GOP legislator who helped establish Colorado’s part of Obamacare defended the state’s health care exchange Tuesday.

Rep. Amy Stephens told fellow Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Janak Joshi that his bill to repeal the law that created the Connect for Health Colorado health care exchange is the wrong approach unless he can propose some workable alternative…

“To come here and say repeal without any other kind of strategy for this state, any other health care ideas, just in my mind is indefensible,” she said. “I say that to you and I say it to the rest of my colleagues, you come to this committee, you want to repeal something, you better have an idea in place because the market demands it.” [Pols emphasis]

Now that she's been unceremoniously Bigfooted out of the U.S. Senate primary by Rep. Cory Gardner, our sympathy for Rep. Amy Stephens grows as she continues to stoutly defend what may go down as the signature achievement of her legislative career–the 2011 legislation establishing Colorado's health insurance marketplace, a key component of the federal Affordable Care Act a.k.a. "Obamacare."

Even though the insurance exchange bill enjoyed bipartisan and business community support, the far right increasingly in control of the GOP primary process labeled Stephens a traitor for making any kind of accommodation of President Barack Obama's dogmatically reviled health reform. There's no question that "Amycare" is a central reason why, despite early insider backing and lots of buzz, Stephens' Senate campaign fell completely flat, forcing Republican kingmakers to find someone else.

All of that is ancient history now, of course. Now it's just term-limited Rep. Stephens and her legacy.

[Joshi] said the Legislature may not have been told exactly what the exchange was or how it would operate, saying some of the testimony that helped get the law enacted was “not told truthfully.”

That raised the ire of Stephens, who said the state’s exchange has passed several audits about how it is operating.

“The public and our Legislature was told absolutely everything up front about this (exchange law),” she said. “We’ve had legislative oversight review of this going on steadily from the moment the bill was passed. If anyone wants to insinuate that anything less than honest, or anything less than transparent, has been going on here, I really take offense to it and the record won’t support that.” [Pols emphasis]

Since the passage of Senate Bill 11-200, Stephens' formerly staunch conservative image has become indelibly linked to the biggest liberal policy initiative of the Obama presidency. Stephens surely didn't predict the pushback she got from the right for helping make the Colorado insurance exchange a bipartisan creation, and beginning with her surprise primary against fellow incumbent Marsha Looper, she has been forced to make a precarious argument that defends her work while attacking the federal law her work directly extends from. It worked against Looper, but as the polls showed clearly, the broader Colorado GOP primary electorate wasn't buying it.

All told, Amy Stephens' story exposes a much deeper problem for Republicans, who have built their success in recent years on radicalizing their base against anything that even peripherally involves "the government"–even as action on a host of issues becomes plainly necessary. For all the advice we dispense in this space, we don't know how Republicans can solve this problem. And Stephens' experience, unfortunately, will not encourage the next Republican in her position to similarly do the right thing.

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19 thoughts on “Unfettered Stephens Lashes Out At “Amycare” Detractors”

  1. Stephens ran for statewide office, raised $50K, spent $60K and dropped out at the first convenient opportunity.

    She is a dead man walking in Republican politics because if Obamcare is toxic for Dems imagine what it is for Republicans.

  2. Representative Stephens is just now learning the hard lesson learned by Christine Todd Whitman. It's not your Republican Party, Representative… it hasn't been in a long time.

    1. Whitman was a shitty governor.  Cut income taxes, but mandated state programs just went to the municipalities to be funded.  In NJ, cities and counties can't collect sales tax–state gets it all.  So guess what happened?  Local property taxes soared.

       

  3. Punished by her own party for actually doing something productive and constructive.  Punished for being sane.  It must be torture having to be associated with todays Republican party, because if you're not a worthless crybaby, they don't want you.

  4. And yet this election may prove to be their last hurrah. They may well take the Senate and do more damage before they're stick a fork in it done. God help us. What does that say about the skill and courage of our Dem legislators and President over these post 2008 years?  So much energy and opportunity squandered by political cowardice from day one of the first year of the first Obama administration. 

    The last thing we need is two more years of voters voting against their own best interests but, sadly, that's what we may have to slog through before demographics finally kill the beast. The browning of America that Ann Coulter speaks of with such fear and loathing is our best bet for getting out from under the the Koch brothers and friends who so easily take advantage of the ignorance, bigotry and xenophobia of Joe Six Pack.  Give me more of the kind of sensible, energetic immigrants that have always kept America fresh, vital and forward moving, curving toward prosperity and empowerment for all, wave after wonderful enriching wave from the beginning, and give them to me ASAP. 

    Just venting. Maybe I'll feel a little more optimistic another day.

        1. Democrats like to see the possibility of defeat, which I think is fine going into close elections.  GOP like to unskew polls to prove they are winning.  March is early to be hand-wringing, IMO, and as long as the GOP runs things like zygote protection bills I think they remain their own largest liability.  Sen. Udall will have to work hard for his re-election, but that's OK and to be expected in a purple state.  

  5. Stephens' experience, unfortunately, will not encourage the next Republican in her position to similarly do the right thing.

    Pols, I'm calling BS. You didn't care about Amy Stephens except to use her against other Republicans. I tried to make the point that Stephens did the right thing, and all the loony lefties on this blog attacked me for it. If you were really interested in doing the right thing, you would have fought for Amy in the primary, but you didn't because you knew she was a threat to Udall.

    Don't get sanctimonious. No one on this blog helped Amy when she needed it most.

      1. Amy never got any traction, because the Tea Party attacked her from the right and Democrats/Colorado Pols from the left.

        Who am I kidding? Colorado Pols and the Colorado Democrats are one and the same.

        1. I always wondered why you wasted spent so much time here — now I find out it's only because CP swings so much weight and influence with your GOPer electorate????

          Whodathunkit . . . ??!!??

          1. Moddy does have a point — if there weren't so many damn Democrats, the Republicans would win a lot more elections!

            So I guess we must take the blame for the GOP's lack of success.

  7. At least she's not being hauled in front of a North Korean hereditary leader or a facist dictator and being made to account for his theft of public funds like poor Mr. Gessler.  

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