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The Spectacle Blog
Mitt Romney gave it the old college try in his health care speech today. Faced with a choice between disowning one of his biggest legislative accomplishments and adding to his list of flip-flops or doubling down on the Massachusetts health care law, Romney has chosen to double down. No matter how skillfully his health care lines are delivered, doubling down creates a basic problem that cannot be resolved.
Romney has to defend a state-level plan that shares the basic architecture of the national plan he proposes to repeal. He has to argue for the repeal of Obamacare without using the best arguments for repeal, which are the real-world failures of his own health care plan in Massachusetts. Romney has to defend in principle the individual mandate that has become central to the constitutional challenge against Obamacare, hoping that the federalism argument can make people forget the individual mandate’s Republican pedigree and the fact that Romneycare was inspired in part by people who had advocated the individual mandate at the federal level. How effective were John Kerry and John Edwards at arguing against the Iraq war they voted for during the 2004 campaign? To many people, the distinctions will sound like technicalities.
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More Blog Posts by W. James Antle, III
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/05/12/romneys-health-care-speech
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c. j. acworth| 5.12.11 @ 6:07PM
...hoping that the federalism argument will make people forget the individual mandate...
The problem for Mitt is that Obama will not let anyone forget where the individual mandate came from. The albatross will still be around Mitts' neck and smeling pretty ripe, too.
Chuck| 5.12.11 @ 6:22PM
Be careful my anti-Romney friends. If the economy continues to wobble Romney remains a contender and if the stock market crashes Romney will be our next President.
Torchwielding Peasant| 5.12.11 @ 6:53PM
WHY?
C Bowen| 5.12.11 @ 6:55PM
Mitt could certainly give Obama a run...in the Democratic primaries.
kingsmill| 5.12.11 @ 11:13PM
Mitt is toast.
Intelligent Design| 5.12.11 @ 8:05PM
Romney would have us believe that it's okay for states to give us socialized medicine, and it's okay for states to force us to buy a product, but it's not okay for the federal government to do the same. Both Romneycare and Obamacare should be repealed in their entirety. We don't need more government interference in medicine, or in our lives. We need far less. We most definitely don't need RINO Romney.
Ron Paul also knocked himself out of contention today by saying that it wasn't necessary to take out Osama bin Laden. This is truly a dumb statement for someone who hopes to be president.
Trump eliminated himself recently by using the F word several times in a speech. Gingrich is smart and articulate, but looks over-the-hill .... another McCain-like image on TV, meaning he would lose to Obama.
Let's hope the Republicans don't nominate a loser. Obama has done so much damage already.
Occam's Tool| 5.13.11 @ 1:37AM
Paulites support his limp wristed position on terrorism, ID. It's a positive feature for them that he's a Kucinich clone on overseas issues.
But he's not going to win anyway, fortunately. As usual, ID, you are correct on that. In addition, all NHS programs suck. Correct again.
JASmius | 5.12.11 @ 8:12PM
>>>On this issue McCain has special credibility, because he was tortured at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, to the point that he attempted suicide and made a false confession
Spicy Joker| 5.12.11 @ 11:21PM
Mitt Romney punked out on running for a second term as governor of Massholechusetts because he was SCARED. He lost in 2008 because he's neither a fiscal nor a social conservative. His 2012 candidacy is going to be an EPIC FAIL just like his last one.
chaussures puma ferrari | 5.12.11 @ 11:30PM
good day!
burt| 5.13.11 @ 12:55AM
Romney should go away and spare us.
Has this clown connected the dots and figured out the historic GOP House landslide was because of
Obamacare , the evil spawn of Romneycare !
The guy is political poison.
Sadly , Bonehead and Cantor have forgetten this fact too.
Larry| 5.13.11 @ 6:20AM
Romney is going nowhere.
Mimi| 5.13.11 @ 6:43AM
God , he's so groomed, looks presidential, organizer..plus....But he just put himself out of the RACE and saved himself a lot of MONEY and TIME. You just can't put a BALL, no matter how you turn it into a SQUARE! If he had said nothing, the game would have lasted longer but still eventually his weakneses would have caught up with him. I think Huck, who was going to ...maybe stay out, WILL get IN now as this plays out. This will be an interesting Primary...Get ready for a good RIDE !!!
yisong| 10.31.11 @ 2:26AM
single row four point contact ball slewing bearing. http://www.1stbearing.com