-By Warner Todd Huston
After all these years in politics, Mitt Romney has finally found something he isn’t going to flip flop on — so far, anyway. Romney recently started a tour to kick off the release of his latest book and when asked if he was sorry he ever signed his name on the Massachusetts healthcare law derided as Romneycare, he ignored the advice from every GOP thinker out there and refused to distance himself from the calamitous law. It’s no apology from Mitt for Romneycare, then.
On his ABC News blog, George Stephanopoulos (every time I hear his name I think Snuffleupagus. I just can’t help it) reported that Romney is standing firm that Romneycare was a good idea at the time. Imagine that. Right when the bulk of the American people are appalled at Obamacare and Romney is about to launch a second attempt to take the White House, Mitt doubles down on Romneycare.
“I’m not apologizing for it, I’’m indicating that we went in one direction and there are other possible directions. I’d like to see states pursue their own ideas, see which ideas work best.”
What an unbelievable mistake! He won’t be able to climb out from under this cloud now. He signed a socialist healthcare law just like Obama’s. This means that Mitt has lost the single biggest issue to attack Obama on in the coming primaries for 2012. Romney has thrown away his biggest weapon against Obama and made of himself Obama lite in a climate where the exact opposite is needed.
Now, strictly speaking, Romney was right that in our system it is up to the states to be the “laboratory” for experimenting with policy. So, in that vein, there was nothing wrong in general with Massachusetts attempting to find a way to deal with its healthcare woes. But the fact of the matter is, the whole edifice that Romneycare was built upon was just as fatally flawed as Obamacare. It should never have been done. And now Romney is appearing to double down on this first mistake and compound it with a second; refusing to admit that his Romneycare was the wrong solution.
Enemies of Romney’s bid for president should, no must, make this the staple of their attack on him. The most amusing thing of all, here, is the fact that Mitt Romney, the king of flip floppers, chose the absolute wrong issue over which to suddenly grow a spine!
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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