As October wore on, the Republican campaign would have focused on the administration’s secretiveness about Obamacare’s problems. In a Washington Post story Saturday and a New York Times story Sunday, experts involved in the Obamacare effort were highly critical of its failures, but were afraid to reveal their names, for fear of provoking the wrath of the administration. Shouldn’t Republicans in Congress want to hear their stories publicly? Beyond that, there is the issue of the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on the so-far failing effort. Where did it go? How was it spent? And then there is the question of whether top Obama administration officials misled lawmakers about Obamacare preparations. Repeatedly, officials from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius down assured Congress that the run-up was going well and that the system would work. Now we know that top officials knew full well of Obamacare’s problems. Was their congressional testimony fully true? As part of the GOP campaign, House Republicans would hold hearings on that and many other questions surrounding the rollout.

The campaign would also focus on the next stage of problems with Obamacare. Once the administration figures out its technical issues, as it presumably will, Obamacare will move into the sticker-shock phase, as millions of Americans discover they will pay higher premiums, or higher deductibles, or both, for the same type of insurance they had before Obamacare. The Republican campaign would go all-out to inform Americans that that is on the way. And at every step, the GOP would play Obama’s promise: If you like your health coverage, you can keep it.

Of course, the White House would not be without defenses in the battle. The administration would continue its pro-Obamacare campaign, with money and organizing and Hollywood celebrities. But Republicans would have a lot of facts on their side. And as each new, unhappy story came to light, the White House would be using more and more of its resources to play defense.