WASHINGTON -- Republicans sensing more momentum for the mid-term elections interpreted Missouri's passage of Proposition C as a backlash against the White House and bigger government.
Republican National Chairman Michael Steele called Missouri's rejection of the federal mandate to purchase health insurance "a significant blow to the Obama administration."
Steele called the Missouri vote "another reason why Republicans will win back the majority in November" in congressional elections.
"By rejecting ObamaCare with nearly three-quarters of the vote in a critical swing state, Missouri sent a clear message to Democrats and the Obama administration that government-run health care is a gross overreach of the federal government that needs to be repealed and replaced," Steele said in a statement.
Unlike the Arizona immigration law, which generated a court ruling last week, the Missouri proposition and several more state efforts challenging the law are unlikely to face court tests any time soon.
For now, the impact is largely political and attests to the success by conservative groups in mobilizing against the new health-care laws and the failure by supporters to defend them.
Democrats did little to combat Proposition C, aware that it likely would win overwhelmingly given the big GOP turnout expected with several contested primaries.
Asked for his reaction to the Missouri vote, Eric Schultz, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, remarked that in November "Roy Blunt will be on the ballot telling Missouri voters that he has sided with insurance companies in Washington to repeal health-care reform and reinstate pre-existing conditions."
Blunt, a GOP congtressman from southwest Missouri, has campaigned heavily against the Democratic-drawn health-care laws and headed a House Republican caucus formed to propose alternatives. On Tuesday, he won his party's nomination for Missouri's opening Senate seat.
For Blunt and other Republicans running in November, the Missouri vote provided affirmation of the political benefits in condemning the new health-care laws while playing into the the party's broader, anti-big government theme.
The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee this morning sent out news releases contending that the Missouri vote suggested more bad news for Democrats.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky struck a theme likely to sound often in the months leading up to the November elections.
McConnell asserted that "the people of Missouri have sent a message to Washington: enough is enough. They rejected the apparent belief by the current administration and Democrat leaders in Congress that they know best -- that distant bureaucrats and lawmakers inside the Beltway have a better grasp of what ails people in places like St. Louis than they do."
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, a Cape Girardeau Republican who easily withstood a primary challenge on Tuesday, today referred to the mandate as an unwelcome intrusion into personal health-care decisions.
"People are looking to stop this law any way they can," she said. "Everyone understands the consequence for our state, our system of care and the individual freedoms and choices we are entitled to as American citizens."
