The American Spectator

The Rudy team is sending around this column today by CATO healthcare maven Michael Tanner on MittCare. He makes the familiar arguments that Commonwealthcare has not achieved universal coverage, has exceed anticipated costs and has not curtailed healthcare inflation. In other writings and interviews he has stressed his fundamental point: by adopting the very un-Republican(well at least unconservative- I'm not sure the two overlap these days) of universal coverage, rather than universal access Romney bought into a misguided goal and was therefore obligated to follow liberal means to that goal-- mandates, fines, government regulation of insurance policies, etc. Ramesh Ponnuru makes the same argument here.

Plenty of conservatives are stepping forward to criticize Huckabee as a big government conservative but there is little doubt that in MittCare, continued support for No Child Left Behind and touting of nanny state programs in his own state Romney does not offer a clear choice for limited government types. Thompson offered the prospect of such a choice but has not been able to get traction. Other than Ron Paul who is going to be the small government advocate in the race? McCain has been rather solid in this regard with the obvious exception of McCain Feingold. Maybe Rudy needs to talk more about the dangers of letting "pointed-headed stupid morons" control our lives.