Here is a video compilation of how Democratic tallking heads justified Obamacare at the time of the vote in the House on the reconciliation bill (h/t CWLsun in Tip Line).
It’s the same way they will justify it in this election cycle.
(Warning: Sound volume uneven)
Update: This also is of interest (via Richochet)
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Mo wonder the Dems want Romney against Obama. But why is the GOP supporting Romney???
Politicians suck.
If Romney wins the GOP nomination, he is toast in the general.
How am I supposed to defend Romney during the general? He makes anyone trying to argue for him look like an idiot, and I don’t need any help on that score.
He doesn’t make anyone that defends him look like an idiot, they have to be almost there to begin with if they adamantly support him.
I’m talking about this idea that if Romney beats my choice for the GOP nom, I’m supposed to suck it up and support Romney. I’m a Tea Party co-chairman and a player in the minor league politics of rural eastern NC. I’ll be asked by a lot of people whether they should support Romney (if he wins the nom). I’m saying.. how the hell do I sell this guy? I can’t.
Here he is trying to defend his position in 2008:
http://youtu.be/1dSy9G_4_Uk
hat-tip redstate, who tackled your question much further:
http://www.redstate.com/aglanon/2012/01/29/why-mitt-romneys-electability-is-not-inevitable/
“Does he (Mitt Romney) want to lead an ideological civil war against this health care bill? I don’t think he wants to do that.”
Everyone is entitled to their own efforts at spin, including Democrats, but this idea that Romney would have difficulty arguing against Obamacare because it shares the mandate with the Massachusetts plan ignores the host of reasons why Obamacare was deeply unpopular when it passed and has grown more unpopular since.
Obamacare would increase federal costs by trillions over time. It raises a host of taxes. It steals $500 billion from Medicare. It saddles states with enormous new Medicaid costs. It creates “death panels” and imposes a phone book full of rules and regulations that affect all insurers and intrude on medical practitioners and impact patient care. And it passed only through a secretive process that included huge windfalls for drug makers and corrupt deals to buy votes in Congress.
Attacking the mandate in court provides the best way to challenge the plan legally but the mandate is far from the only thing American voters do not like about — particularly swing voters. Romney will have no shortage of ammunition to throw at Obama on this issue. Obama will have to defend a lot more than the mandate.
Anyway, since Newt was gung ho for the mandate as recently as 2009, he would face the same Democrat spin.
So Romney will be arguing that we need a good deal more government involvement — as long as it’s done at the state level of course — but just not as much as under Obamacare?
Good luck with that.
correction: we needed
That’s exactly what he has been consistently saying. Look at his talk about regulations…very progressive approach to regulations.
They are the same models. Romneycare has raised the costs of premiums, just like Obamacare is starting to do now. Romneycare will/has increased taxes on MA citizens, just like Obamacare will be doing in the near future.
““The problem is there is no way to say that,” Gruber told Capital New York. “Because they’re the same f***ing bill. He just can’t have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it’s the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he’s just lying.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/283403/mit-prof-who-advised-romney-says-romneycare-obamacare-same-katrina-trinko
One thing that has always irked me over Romneycare is how he has kept doubling down on the Romneycare is a “conservative” law because it was passed at the state level. Whether it was passed at state, country, city, or Federal level makes no difference to me and a lot of people that don’t think the Government should be forcing people to do anything.
Romney basically takes Paternalism for granted and assumes everyone is like Cass Sunstein (it’s not a matter of if Paternalism is moral, it’s a matter of how much can you force.) Paternalism is not conservative!
It would be different if Romney has some humility and admitted that forcing people to do anything is morally wrong. But he hasn’t. Romney is running on the premise that 1) he can “fix” the economy (which shows extreme Obama-like Hubris) 2) he can repeal Obamacare (which is all talk, his actions speak to the contrary) 3) he is electable (going down the tubes with every scorched earth attack ad he runs).
So we should thank Mitt Romney for submitting a bill to a liberal states legislature that would be ammended and that he would not be able to override their veto’s? I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
It was Romney who signed a law with an individual mandate. April 12, 2006.
(Dr. Moffitt of the Heritage foundation and Ted Kennedy are pictured behind him at the signing ceremony.)
http://www.salon.com/2011/04/12/romney_healthcare_massachusetts/singleton/
“The April 12, 2006, signing ceremony at Faneuil Hall was designed to be his national coming out. Here was Romney’s moment to lay claim to a Big Achievement that would make him worthy of representing his party on the national stage — the application of conservative principles to address an enormous social problem….
But back in ’06, it just didn’t seem that risky. Sure, some conservative voices attacked Romney over the mandate, claiming it was an affront to individual liberty. But plenty of others defended him. Romney even brought a representative of the Heritage Foundation to the signing ceremony, giving him a place onstage with Ted Kennedy. Hugh Hewitt proclaimed that “the Romney campaign just took a big step forward.”
There simply was no universal consensus on the right five years ago that an individual mandate was a bad thing. Romney made the case that it fostered personal responsibility and called the law practical and “market-based.””
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hhpr/currentissue/223-233%20Health%20Highlights_Moffit_edited.pdf
From the Harvard Public Health Review Dr Moffit writes in Spring 2008….
“While the Massachusetts legislature re-jected Romney’s “personal responsibility” proposal in 2006 in favor of a straight mandate to purchase health insurance or pay tax penalties and a fine, lawmakers in other states could rely upon Romney’s model.”
The Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, Barak Obama, and Mitt Romney all favored the individual mandate. Heritage and Gingrich have repeatedly admitted their mistake (supporting individual responsibility, a conservative value, but forgetting the rights aspect of it) and reversed their support. Obama and Romney ***put it into law***.
If that’s not a major difference, I don’t know what is.
Am I the only one who thinks that the “inevitable” showdown with the dems on Obamacare is being overblown?
The video montage is ancient history. Obamacare was passed almost two years ago. It has been an abysmal failure; the economy has been in a stall ever since.
There was nary a mention of Obamacare in the State of the Union campaign-kickoff address which indicates that Obama’s campaign is going to make every effort to steer clear of the issue. Obama hasn’t got a leg to stand on with Obamacare, and he knows it.
If the question comes up in a debate with Obama, this will be Romney’s argument:
“If I become president, I will repeal ‘Obamacare.’ My bill was 70 pages. His bill is 2,700 pages. In those extra 2,630 pages he’s doing a lot of stuff that is just devastating to the health care system in this country. He’s wrong.”
–Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, May 31, 2011
70 does not equal 2700
therefore:
Romneycare does not equal Obamacare
Obamacare and Romneycare are virtually identical, were even written by the same technocrats. The number of pages they are written on is irrelevant and just about the dumbest argument I’ve ever heard.
Henry Hawkins. heh!
The most interesting part of this is how supposedly neutral media slugs like John Harwood of CNBC was spitting out the Democrat talking points. Listen to Dean and Harwood and you get practically the same thing, no analysis, nothing but the traitorcrat party line.
Like Palin said “The math is the math”:
“The memo, from National Political Director Martin Baker, notes Romney’s lack of conservative grassroots support, and stresses that Romney currently has just 33 of the 1144 needed (Gingrich has 25 of 1144).
“Regardless of who wins on Tuesday,” the memo says, “they will have less than 10% of the delegates they need to claim the nomination….”
Additionally, the memo stresses that the proportional nature of the upcoming contests “essentially guarantees that no candidate will secure the nomination anytime soon and the map quickly becomes more favorable for Gingrich.”
More than 20 percent of the available delegates (467) will be awarded on Super Tuesday, and the memo notes that, one of the Super Tuesday states is Georgia, with 76 delegates at stake. To put that in perspective, “even if Romney wins Florida on Tuesday, he will only have 83 total delegates; Newt’s home state could effectively cancel out his entire delegate count to date.”
The memo also describes Tennessee (58) and Oklahoma (43) as “favorable” Super Tuesday states, and notes that just one week after Super Tuesday (March 13), 90 delegates will be in play in Alabama and Mississippi. And if the point that a Florida loss is survivable wasn’t already hammered home, the memo notes, “these 90 [delegates] alone are more than the 83 Romney will have in hand on Wednesday morning if he wins Florida.””
http://tinyurl.com/82w5rzg
The ruling class: It’s over because that’s just the way it’s done.
The country class: We aren’t playing that game anymore.