GOP focus is jobs, not health care: Candidates mostly avoid issue party pledged to hammer

The Boston Globe reports:

Republicans had promised to make the fall elections a reprise of the bitter, exhausting debate over what they call “Obamacare.’’ But two months before the vote, the GOP has adopted a more nuanced approach and folded the issue into broader attacks on the Democrats’ handling of the economy.

When Republicans bring up health care, they tend to list it as just one example in a litany of complaints about the “misplaced priorities’’ and “overreaching’’ of Democrats. Even many Democrats are downplaying the new sweeping overhaul, once trumpeted as a signature accomplishment, because they are skittish about being portrayed as advocates of big government.

In a sign of how rapidly the ground has shifted, the new health care law, approved in March after a year of legislative struggles and caustic town hall protests, didn’t even come up last week at a marquee US Senate de bate in California between Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer and her opponent, Carly Fiorina.