Usually I think saying both-sides is pretty lazy, but has any Congress in the last few decades done anything but delegate more of their authority to someone else? One party always complains about Executive Orders and interference when the other party is President, but then never curtails the power when they get a chance.
One can't claim this without addressing Obama's (correct) decision to follow the spirit of the law and not push through[1] Merrick Garland when Republicans refused to conduct committee hearings[2].
As you said, McConnell and the Republican Senate refused to hold hearings on Obama's Supreme Court nominee, in March more than seven months before the election 2016 election - "Give the people a voice in the filling of this vacancy" said McConnell. [1]
The other half:
Four years later, they had no problem confirming Trump's nominee in late October, not two weeks before Trump's 2020 election - and McConnell said "The precedent only applies when different parties control the Senate and the White House." [2]
To me the inconsistency seems contrary to the spirit of democracy.
And it started as simply rebranded Romneycare (the 2006 MA state plan), so Rs should have found it palatable. And for the first half of Obama's first term, Ds could vote in anything they wanted but we still got a terrible version of a R health care plan.
FWIW, Nixoncare, totally blocked by Ted Kennedy because the dems didn't want Nixon's name on anything else that was nice (the Clean Air Act President kept claiming he'd end Johnson's war in Vietnam and then he had the gall to open relations with China!), was more like the single-payer health care Obama ran on but could not produce.
Also: Disclaimer, I'm absolutely not a conservative. I just don't like the liberal rewrites of actual history.
It's funny how Nixon definitely was a crook, and a loon, and should have gone to prison, and his paranoia and shenanigans set the pattern for and gave license to things to come, up to and including the current crisis... but he's still probably the best postwar Republican president, in terms of good things done or attempted.
Obamacare still has stood the test of time. Even in the face of the first Trump administration and both houses of congress being run by the GOP.
Despite promises to "repeal Obamacare" they never did repeal it... or even change it much at all. It was just too popular / the consequences too much to consider.
The joke at the time being that the Republicans would repeal Obamacare and replace it with the Affordable Care Act ;)
In that regard, yes, both. However in that time they were never really faced with any president who would take the power granted anywhere near the extreme we see today. When that happened, one party recoiled in horror and the other cheered it on.
Stuff like the Muslim ban was pretty bad the first round of Trump, but it didn't seem to motivate the Democrats to start limiting the Executive branch in any way when they got back to power. I am pretty sure, it will be the same next time they regain power.
