Republicans did not respond to ACA by denying Obama everything, good for the country or not. They announced that total partisan opposition on Day 1. They used ACA to raise the stink and get the voters riled up about Obama. If he hadn't signed ACA, it just would have been something else. After all, ACA was almost identical to RomneyCare but with a smaller non-participation tax. I think the Democrats biggest mistake was not calling it RomneyCare right up front. Republicans invented the label "ObamaCare" in an attempt to make it a partisan issue, even though they wrote a lot of the bill.

Funny, Romney participated a lot more in the creation of RomneyCare, and there was very little backlash at all.