Enough already.

You would think that Senate Republicans would catch on to the fact that the Repeal and Replace dog just won’t hunt because, in a closely divided chamber, any significant change to national health care will require some level of Democrat support.

You do not get Democrat support by stuffing a political defeat down their throats, which is precisely what Mitch McConnell tried to do – and failed.

Democrats see passage of the Affordable Care Act to be a major achievement of the Obama era. Others may disagree with this assessment, but nevertheless, Democrats are emotionally and politically invested in this legislation. To require, as a precondition to any further health care discussion, that the Affordable Care Act be repealed is a non-starter.

McConnell chose to ignore this reality. Just as he did in successfully blocking President Obama’s nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court, the snapping turtle from Kentucky elected to ignore custom and comity in order to ram through a political victory that would legitimize seven years of Republican damnation of Obamacare and promises of a better Republican alternative to replace it, promises that proved to be empty.

In the end, the best McConnell could do was force a vote on a so-called “skinny repeal” bill that many in his own party labelled a fraud, for which they would vote only if they were guaranteed the bill would never become law.

“No” votes cast by two persisting women and a maverick senator from Arizona denied McConnell – not to mention the current tenant in the White House – even this phony victory.

All of which brings us to today, where a president charged with seeing that the laws of the land are faithfully executed is threatening to ignore portions of the law in order to kill off the Affordable Care Act despite the fact it would mean millions of Americans, many of whom voted for him, would lose insurance coverage. In the Senate, there is even talk of attempting to resuscitate the rotting corpse of Repeal and Replace.

Rather than going down either of these paths, neither of which looks very promising, why not try another way?

Let’s call it “Repair and Reset.”

There is consensus among Democrats that the Affordable Care Act needs work. Seven years on, the flaws and unintended consequences of any piece of legislation are going to be exposed. On the other hand, millions more Americans have health care than was formerly the case.

Why throw out the baby with the bath water?

Why not “let’s talk?” There are ideas out there coming from both sides of the aisle, and from both chambers.

Who knows what issues and proposals would come up in a freewheeling debate, but let’s have the debate, rather than circumventing it in favor of achieving some partisan political coup.

On some issues our representatives may agree to disagree. On others, they may find ways to muzzle the tired and outdated campaign rhetoric that has poisoned the issue and actually move forward for the benefit of the American public rather than toting up an inside-the-beltway political score.

Democrats will oppose “repeal,” but they could live with “repair” because they know repair is needed. If some of those repair measures come from Republican proposals, so be it. Having some skin in the game is better than trying to explain to their constituents why, after seven years of promises, nothing got done on their watch.

And then there’s the “reset.” Let’s do it the old-fashioned way. Rather than McConnell’s cynical legerdemain, or the president’s authoritarian fulminations, let’s use regular order – draft bills with known content, with committee review, floor debate, conference committees, and the fierce negotiations that often send the negotiators up a tree, but that usually produce a better final product.

Perhaps I am naïve, but with one-sixth of the national economy at stake, I think a robust debate is what the framers of the Constitution would expect of Congress.

It’s what we should expect of Congress as well.

Repair and Reset.