The GOP clearly did want to repeal the ACA, and ultimately would have (questionably, via budget reconciliation, requiring only a simple majority in the Senate) except for the last-minute trick of John McCain. McConnell expected him to vote for repeal, and so allowed other subserviant “moderate” GOP Senators Collins and Murkowski to take the token ‘no’ votes. McCain put in his vote against after there was no way for McConnell to get around it, and the GOP was furious.

After the successful repeal vote in the House in May 2017, the GOP threw big celebratory parties. You can see pictures of representatives smiling and laughing about the prospect of significant numbers of their own constituents losing coverage. They really relished the idea of taking away millions of people’s healthcare, and were profoundly disappointed when it didn’t work out.

As for the dozens of repeal votes while Obama was still in office: those were a quite effective partisan posturing effort. GOP-aligned media spent years on false propaganda about the effects of the ACA, trying to trick a public who largely didn’t understand the law or the healthcare system more generally. (To the point that e.g. in Kentucky people like “Kynect” while “Obamacare” is extremely unpopular, even though they are two names for the same thing.) GOP politicians were electorally very successful campaigning against the ACA while trying to sabotage it in every way they could. Much easier than even pretending to come up with a plan of their own.

Since the GOP Congress during Obama’s second term had no constructive agenda, essentially all of their time was spent on stuff like ACA repeal and Benghazi hearings. You are right that it was a bad-faith effort.

> I'm curious if you'd say the same about Republicans repealing Obamacare dozens of times, knowing the bills would go nowhere.

I would have said it the first time, at least.

The House didn't pass HEROES dozens of times.

> If you think HEALS was milquetoast at $1.1T, you must be pretty upset that Pelosi has now agreed to pass a bill at $0.9T...

It was milquetoast, but not primarily because of the dollar amount (which is, though, inadequate as anything other than a partial stopgap and bridge), but because of substantive provisions.

> you must be pretty upset that Pelosi has now agreed [...]

Nancy Pelosi is surely also upset that we can’t do something more aggressive, but anything at all would be better than nothing (and we might still be stuck with nothing this year). We’re in an extraordinarily severe crisis, and people, small businesses, and state/local governments have been in urgent need of relief for months.

Even jaded political veterans expected some action from the Senate these past 7 months, under the circumstances. But what we have seen again and again in recent years is that even when we lower the bar down to the floor, they still manage to trip over it.