Unfortunately modern US politics is an us v them game. I don't see Pubs tethering themselves to a weight around their "opponents" leg that has the potential to drag them to the bottom of the sea...even if it drags the economy down with them. That being said, pinning all the blame of the Republicans is short sided IMO. The conception of this awful piece of legislation is at least part of the reason we are were we are and that falls squarely on the Dems in Congress and the President. Plenty of blame to go around on this one.
Sorry, website stupidity aside, I won't buy into the scare tactics on the ACA. For all it warts, the country is much, much better off after its passage. It needs fine-tuning, which the GOP currently won't allow, but I'll take what we have now over what we had before, without a second thought. Its greatest accomplishment may be forcing the right to accept that serious HC reform is going to happen, no matter how much insurance-lobby money is poured into the opposition. For that alone, The ACA was a watershed accomplishment.
It was hard for the Dems to understand in 2009--hard for anyone, really--that the GOP would rather wreck the government and economy than accept a political loss on HC reform. The Dems vastly underestimated how deeply into the pockets of the insurance lobby the GOP had fallen. When the ACA passed, the natural assumption in Washington on the left was that further tweaks would be hammered about by grudging bipartisan agreement, as usually happens when a big legislative battle is fought and determined. Who'd have thought the GOP would instead spend the next 4-7 years intentionally trying to make the ACA not work as intended, at the detriment to health care systems, the economy, and even their own political positioning? But that's what special interest money does -- it places the desires of a specific group of corporate interests over the well-being of the nation. And that's what today's GOP does on most issues, in a nutshell. It's why we can't get anything done regarding HC reform, sensible gun laws, sensible environmental legislation, etc. If the money doesn't want it, the GOP won't allow it. Not even sensible inches, like, say, background checks.
If the GOP runs against Obamacare for the third straight election, they are going to slip even further down the crevasse. At some point, you have to stop touching the stove.