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In a remarkable exchange on Lawrence O’Donnell’s The Last Word, Tennessee Rep. Phil Roe says he supports the repeal of ObamaCare and the Congressional health care plan, which he doesn’t use because he’s on Medicare now. It was amazing and surreal all the way around. Mark Meckler, Tea Party Whore Extraordinaire, was on claiming that the “American People” supported repeal on a 2:1 basis. Adam Green of Bold Progressives did a great job challenging Phil Roe to allow them to conduct a poll of progressive versus conservative ideas, which I think Roe agreed to. Green also corrected Meckler’s misstatement about people’s attitude toward the health care bill, pointing out that most people think it didn’t go far enough. I don’t have a transcript available of the entire exchange, but it’s worth the time to watch it, if for nothing more than the big laugh at the end when Roe says “repeal it all because he’s on Medicare.” Digby’s take on the repeal effort nails it: I suspect that the health care reform will be the Republicans’ most valuable hostage in the next two years. Indeed, it will be the one thing that both the administration and the Senate will fight to the death to preserve — it is Obama’s most important legacy and the Democrats spilled a lot of blood to get it through. It remains to be seen what the Republicans will extract from them in the negotiations. The repeal vote will be purely symbolic, as O’Donnell points out. But there will be a budget battle royale over funding the exchanges, the subsidies, and other provisions. That’s where Republicans will begin to unwind the hairball that is ObamaCare.