John Boehner Promises Obamacare Repeal Vote in January, but...

The real question here is will John Boehner's vote to repeal Obamacare be effective politics or nothing more than a symbolic promise kept to voters with no real chance of killing the new healthcare laws. I tend to believe the latter.

Boehner has promised one of the first orders of business in the new House of Representatives is a vote to repeal Obamacare. Fine, but Democrats still control the Senate and the Presidency. It might get repealed in the House of Representin' but it's probably not going to get much further. There is little reason to suspect it will even be brought up for a vote in the Senate, which means this vote is a symbolic gesture and we still get to live with the government forcing Americans to purchase health insurance against their free will.

However, some believe this could damage Democrats even more, and the question will be how many Democrats will part ways with Obama to keep their name off a list of those who voted to repeal Obamacare. While many believe this is a win for Republicans, I remind you that those seats in Congress that were picked up by Republicans this year are the seats that may have considered voting for repeal now if they were still in Democratic hands. The seats that remain are mostly strong Democratic districts where all this doesn't matter. How many Democrats do you think will even bother to vote on this bill if they are districts where they won by a small margin? Not many I assure you. The damage will be limited.

In the end, we get the repeal vote from Boehner and not a whole lot more. With Obama bypassing Congress to push cap and trade legislation into the EPA with Senate approval, how will the new Congress actually stop funding Obamacare when Obama has stated he won't even play by the rules.