Republicans warm up to Obamacare

At least some Republican voters are coming around to seeing how Obamacare is helping them personally. They still don't like our POTUS but they don't want to lose the health care security provided by Obamacare. So they may end up voting for him to protect their own interests.

It's far from a large trend. Some hard core Republicans, like diabetic Katherine Weaver, won't be switching her vote. But of course, she has, or thinks she has, health care security already:

Weaver, 52, knows it would be difficult if not impossible to buy insurance on her own because of her disease, but she said she's not worried because she has good insurance through her job as a public school teacher in Dallas, where she's worked for 20 years.

"It's very hard to get rid of teachers," she said. "I'm very protective of my job. I document everything I do."

Apparently it doesn't occur to her that she could become too ill to work at some point and lose her job and her insurance. Or her union busting, teacher hating, government slashing GOP party could manage to shut down the public education system altogether and leave her to fend for herself in the merciless private insurance market. Her shortsighted worldview makes a good case for abolishing the tenure system. (No, I'm not advocating we do that.)

More encouraging are the Republicans like Jill Thacker who "felt 'weird' as she stood there in the 7-11 in Sanford, Florida, thinking about which cup to take" in their coffee cup presidential poll.

She thought about her insurance, which covers her only if "I get hit by a bus." It's the only insurance she can afford given her preexisting condition.

She thought about how she's still paying off a $22,000 emergency room bill from last year.

She thought about her 25-year-old daughter, who's on her father's insurance only because of Obamacare.

But she also thought about how, in many fundamental ways, she just doesn't like Obama.

Then she reached for the blue cup with Obama's name on it.

"I really do feel conflicted," she said. "But for me, it's all about health care. It's my number one thing."

Many of us said Obamacare would be more popular once the provisions started taking effect and people began to see how it benefited them individually. GOP succeeded in using repeal as wedge issue in 2010, because that hadn't happened yet. Encouraging to see the strategy beginning to backfire.