It's down to BENGHAZI.

... Benghazi has become a sort of catchword. To Republicans, it symbolizes everything bad about the Obama administration. It's not the first word to fill that role. At the start of the president's first term, it was Obamacare. Later, Solyndra. ...

OK, seems kind of disjointed. The connection is that some GOPers are finally realizing they have to move from politics to reality. They know it's time to surrender on Obamacare.

This is an interesting idea:

Medicare reimburses them at 85 percent of the doctors' rate, for example, but they also charge less to insurance companies and out-of-pocket patients. And since the "blue states" in this sense are a pretty diverse lot, we can get pretty good quasi-experimental data as to whether cheaper nurse practitioners are actually any worse than primary care doctors in this regard. The answer is a resounding no...

Florida's a lot bluer than Tennessee (obviously) and even though they just elected a Tea Party guy (Rubio) to the U.S. Senate, Florida's Tea Party governor's numbers are in the crapper. That gives him a lot of incentive to try and appear more moderate.

Haslam has no such incentive, of course.

I have been chuckling about this all morning and just got asked by a fellow professor about Haslam. My only comment is that he is a fabulously wealthy white male, which makes him not exactly a "fresh alternative."

Stop the Presses! Ramsey Says He's Open to Medicaid Expansion