Off-Topic: In which I feel genuinely sorry for Avik Roy. Seriously.

Avik Roy is a well-known conservative, anti-ACA healthcare pundit, writer and advisor. As the article I link to below describes him:

Avik Roy is a Republican’s Republican. A health care wonk and editor at Forbes, he has worked for three Republican presidential hopefuls — Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Marco Rubio. Much of his adult life has been dedicated to advancing the Republican Party and conservative ideals.

Regular readers know that he and I have butted heads several times in the past:

• A response to Avik Roy
• In which Avik Roy almost makes sense...but kind of misses the point in the end.
• In which Avik Roy rehashes 1 BS claim & misses the damned point otherwise
• BREAKING: Avik Roy uncovers MASSIVE CONSPIRACY by the HHS Dept!!
• Avik Roy has shocking revelation: Healthcare is expensive and taxes pay for stuff!!
• Avik Roy's latest is kind of embarrassing.
• Dear Avik: When you get called out publicly, at least acknowledge that you were called out.

So how can a post about Mr. Roy be considered "off topic"? Simple: An article about him in Vox a couple of days ago has absolutely zilch to do with healthcare whatsoever.

Instead, it's well summed up in the headline: A Republican intellectual explains why the Republican Party is going to die:

Avik Roy is a Republican’s Republican. A health care wonk and editor at Forbes, he has worked for three Republican presidential hopefuls — Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Marco Rubio. Much of his adult life has been dedicated to advancing the Republican Party and conservative ideals.

But when I caught up with Roy at a bar just outside the Republican convention, he said something I’ve never heard from an establishment conservative before: The Grand Old Party is going to die.

This is a remarkable piece, filled with quotable snippets:

“The fact is, today, the Republican coalition has inherited the people who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — the Southern Democrats who are now Republicans,” Roy says. “Conservatives and Republicans have not come to terms with that problem.”...“It’s the power of wishful thinking. None of us want to accept that opposition to civil rights is the legacy that we’ve inherited,” Roy says.

...This soul-searching led Roy to an uncomfortable conclusion: The Republican Party, and the conservative movement that propped it up, is doomed.

Both are too wedded to the politics of white nationalism to change how they act, but that just isn’t a winning formula in a nation that’s increasingly black and brown. Either the Republican Party will eat itself or a new party will rise and overtake its voting share.

I strongly advise reading the entire piece.

As for Mr. Roy, all I can say is this: You helped build this. You have the power to help stop it. Admitting the problem is an important first step.

UPDATE: Hmmm...several people over at the dKos cross-post suggested that I really shouldn't feel any sympathy at all for Mr. Roy. "DisNoir36" stated it best, if rather harshly:

I don't feel sorry for him at all.

It's a well known fact that a large part of the right wings opposition to the ACA is that it was a black man who made it happen on a national level. It was his man's plan after all. Mitt Romney pushed into law in MA. But the fact that a black man took their plan and made it happen falls them.

Another part of the right wings opposition to the ACA is that it disproportionately helps minorities and people of color. Last thing racist white wingers want is to give something free to those negroes.

So either Roy is a useful idiot who's been peddling his anti ACA bullshit without realizing he's been doing the bidding of the white wing or he himself is a part of that white wing of the GOP who is realizing the Frankenstein he's created is going to devour him along with the rest of the party.

Either way he's getting what he deserves. Admitting there's a problem without also admitting culpability is no step at all. It's just shifting the blame.

I don't know...perhaps I'm caught up in the kumbaya spirit of Democratic unity since Bernie Sanders formally endorsed Hillary, or perhaps it's the shared sense of horror over the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States openly calling for an adversarial foreign government to commit espionage on his political opponent in order to influence the election that has me a bit more willing to set aside Roy's past sins for the moment.