Over at NRO,
After many months of getting a pass, it seems that the other candidates are willing to finally start hitting Governor Mitt Romney on his major weakness: The Massachusetts Health Care Insurance Reform Law. The bill, known by most as Romneycare, is (as we all have been saying for many moons) the basis for the much maligned Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise affectionately known as Obamacare. I’ve been in endless debates and discussions with Romney supporters and surrogates for some time now as they paint a beautiful picture of the ultimate State’s Rights battle. They claim that Romneycare vs Obamacare isn’t about socialized medicine vs the free market. They say it’s actually the core of the Federalist struggle and that Romney will channel Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and march onto the capital steps, fulfilling the dreams and desires of tea partiers nationwide by finally standing up and saying, “Enough is enough! Let the state’s make their decisions Obama! Your days of tyranny are at an end!” And they all rejoiced. Yet, continually when Romney is approached on this subject in the debates with fellow Republicans, he seems incapable of defending any other point and seems befuddled at the idea that there might be more than one part about Obamacare that American’s had wholly objected to. For him, it’s all about the mandate. But it’s important to keep in mind, Mitt Romney does not object to the concept of mandates. Far from it actually. In case you haven’t already heard it a dozen times, let me try to explain the premise of Mitt Romney’s defense of the individual mandate that exists in Massachusetts. From his perspective, it’s a simple matter of mathematics combined with certainty of human behavior. In Massachusetts they had a serious problem, one which has presented itself in every state in the country: people without insurance were racking up enormous hospital bills and then skipping out on the debt. This put the state in a position where healthcare costs were continually rising in order to compensate for the loss that was generated by these “free riders.” It’s a legitimate issue which has been something that everyone has tried to figure out how to tackle for generations. Ron Paul’s answer to the question of people who couldn’t afford insurance nor their hospital bill seemed to be something along the lines of “screw them.” By and large, this has been considered a bad answer so conservatives have continually looked for other solutions. Over the years, everyone from Newt Gingrich to the Heritage Foundation (and some claim that even Santorum ) has at one time or another come to the conclusion that the only answer is to force everyone to pay up ahead of time. Either by requiring them to have insurance, forcing them onto government run insurance like medicare, or having them pay some type of annual fee if they refused to do either of those two things. Heritage & Gingrich have both changed their position on this. Romney has not. As recently as 2008, the mandate question was not a hot button issue. On the campaign trail, Romney was still touting his healthcare bill as a solution that the entire nation could use to solve this ever growing problem. Whether his view of “nationwide solution” meant state by state or federally done is still debated to this day. Thanks to Obamacare and the backlash from conservatives, libertarians, and independents nationwide, individual mandates moved to the front of everyone’s minds. This would of course be a problem for a guy who wants to run for president and also “loves mandates.” But then a beautiful thing happened: it started to be challenged in courts across the country as a 10th amendment issue. Eureka! This isn’t about whether or not it’s good policy! It’s about the process which brought it about and the fact that it trumped the desires of the states! At last! An intellectual justification for how Romney could enact Romneycare, call for its nationwide implementation, and still run on a ticket that promises to repeal legislation that does this very thing. It’s the Federalism stupid! But there’s a problem that all of the fanatical screaming about “electability” simply won’t or can’t address. This path may work great to convince committed conservatives that Romney is on their side, but it will not work so well in the general elections against Barack Obama and his $1 billion reelection campaign machine. Currently when Romneycare is assaulted (mostly by primary opponents and their surrogates on the right), conservatives that support the Governor come out in droves to explain away all of the issues in ways that they think will mostly appeal to rationality and reason. Case in point is Ms. Ann Coulter who currently believes that a vote for anyone but Mitt is a vote for Barack Obama. The other day, David Limbaugh tweeted a statement out of frustration with Romney supporters (he’s in the Santorum camp): Ms. Coulter, a leader in defending Romney on national television and elsewhere, replied to this concern with what I’m assuming she thought would be a satisfactory answer: This isn’t the only example of the committed conservative’s defense of Romneycare. For example, Ms. Coulter also retweeted Jim Pethokoukis who had tweeted one of the points of a study recently released on the effects of Romneycare: And she’s not alone. Today on Fox & Friends, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi defended the Governor as well: She twists and turns around the issue that the Fox host’s are trying to squeeze out of her and ultimately fail to do. The issue is: beyond the 10th amendment issue, how does Mitt Romney defend his attacks on the basis of Obamacare? Obamacare is in philosophy, execution, and in many ways application, the same as Romneycare. With the tweets above as the example of what substantive defenses the Romney campaign will use to battle in the generals,, Ms. Coulter gives us a preview of the rationale. And it’s all right out of the Obama playbook and talking points. Their plan actually seems to be to take the fight to the capital by saying: Public health insurance didn’t crowd out employer sponsored insurance in Massachusetts That any mandate, be it for public schools or for car insurance, is evidence that a mandate is perfectly acceptable even when it’s a mandate related to your right to exist. That costs are being contained and kept down as a result of the bill and that the uninsured are now insured and the free rides are over. That the mandate is only a technicality because anyone can choose not to be a part of it by simply paying a fee every year. That the people of Massachusetts wanted healthcare reform and that a duly elected legislature passed the bill and thus it’s perfectly acceptable and reasonable. If these defenses sound familiar it’s because they are virtually identical to the defenses we heard for a year and a half leading up to the passage of Obamacare. And this is only the low hanging fruit. Obama could easily run ads defending the tenants of Obamacare at this point and use the likes of Ann Coulter and Pam Bondi (who is actually suing the Fed over Obamacare) to make the case for them that it’s a great bill. I would love for Mr. Coulter or Ms. Bondi to explain exactly how it is that Mitt Romney is going to get in front of millions of Americans, the majority of which couldn’t tell you the name of the Speaker of the House, and convince them that this slick, polished banker who for many will represent the very institutions that spent the last few years bankrupting the country, is totally not a hypocrite because after all, the 10th amendment and stuff. Yes he agrees with mandates. Yes he agrees with more bureaucracy around healthcare. Yes he agrees with top down government solutions. But federalism!!! For many Americans, they will hear Democrats for 10 months defending the basics of socialized medicine and they’ll also hear Republicans for 10 months defending the basics of socialized medicine. We’ll finally be in unison as each side tries to convince the middle that their plan was best with the only variation being one side didn’t like the process taken under by the other. That ultimately, socialized medicine and mandates are the only viable solution and that all sides they have a chance to vote on agree. Whether or not the entire caricature is accurate is entirely irrelevant. The Obama campaign can and will successfully paint him as a flip flopper who is only changing his mind on the tenants of Obamacare because his banking overlords told him to. If he’s got some other fantastic policy positions that will make up for this wide gap in electability I’m happy to hear them. But to borrow from Mr. Gingrich, frankly, I think he’s fundamentally the wrong candidate. Cross-Posted at BenHoweShow.com
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Why Mitt Romney’s Electability is Not Inevitable
It changed so suddenly. Huntsman out Monday. Today, Rick Perry is out. Huntsman, barely a factor in South Carolina, threw his support to Mitt Romney. Rick Perry, more of a factor, threw his support to Gingrich. The Monday debate in South Carolina is a critical detail. Polling before it showed a Romney lead. Polling after it showed a Gingrich surge. Then Sarah Palin endorsed Newt Gingrich. Then news broke that Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney, really won Iowa. Then Rick Perry dropped out and endorsed Newt Gingrich. Tonight, at 8pm ET, there is a CNN debate. Then Saturday, the voters vote. And behind scenes there is a quiet operation — an operation designed to get Ron Paul the nomination in a fractured field. All the week’s events play right into Dr. Paul’s plan that few even see coming. We’ll get into it all in the Horserace. Newt Gingrich Gingrich heads into Saturday riding a huge wave of momentum. The Second Mrs. Gingrich could potentially spoil it with her interview on the warpath, but the Gingrich daughters responded quickly and could lessen the blow. In fact, while her side of the story is seedy and hostile, it is an open question if Americans will have any sympathy for a woman who herself destroyed Gingrich’s first marriage. She’s no puritan here and Gingrich’s children seem willing to fully defend him. Gingrich also has Sarah Palin and Rick Perry. So tonight all eyes will be on him as he comes under a withering attack from Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul. He is tonight’s real frontrunner in South Carolina. Ron Paul A prominent friend told me some weeks ago that he noticed an odd thing. In his state, several people who have been successful in getting themselves known as very probably Mitt Romney delegates for the Republican National Convention are also his supporters. And they are not just my friends’ supporters, they are also long time staunch Ron Paul supporters. Why then would they, long time staunch Ron Paul supporters, align this year with Mitt Romney? He made calls and talked to friends in other states. All of them saw the same thing happening — long time Dr. Paul supporters working to become delegates to the convention pledging to support Mitt Romney and others. If the field stays fractured at this level, with only a few people, but each getting delegates enough to prevent the front runner from an outright majority, there will be a second vote at the Republican National Convention. Delegates are only locked in for their candidate during the first vote. After the first vote, they can vote for whoever they want. So if Mitt Romney is unable to clear an outright majority on the first ballot, suddenly he could see some of his delegates turn on him — turn and go back to Ron Paul. It is an ingenious strategy premised on a convention where no one gets majority support early. It plays well to a primary calendar where the delegates are first awarded proportionally. Who knows if it is a campaign strategy or just his volunteers, but the Paul campaign has been active now for four years trying to take over local parties. It may pay off if the GOP doesn’t unite around a candidate soon. Mitt Romney It remains Mitt Romney’s race to lose. Romney is nationally still the front runner. He remains the pick of the establishment and the Washington GOP crowd. He has the money and the ballot access the others don’t. But the GOP will go vote for Romney holding their nose. They may start settling, but they do not like him. And now we know that not only did he get less votes in 2012 in Iowa than he did in 2008, he also lost yet another election. Each day this race drags on the veneer of electability wears off and he has to start answering questions that involve phrases like “Cayman Islands” and “Swiss bank account.” No more man of the people. Rick Santorum He should be the next to drop out. The rallying of evangelicals in Texas did him no good. Gingrich leads him among evangelicals 2 to 1 and is trouncing him in South Carolina. He may have won Iowa, but his remaining in the race, like Perry before him, now helps Mitt Romney. Look for Mitt Romney to start throwing bones to Santorum in the debate and on the campaign trail.
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The Horserace for January 19, 2012
RedState Morning Briefing January 12, 2012 Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge. 1. In defense of capitalism 2. Rick Santorum: A Massively Expanded Welfare State is ‘The Genuine Conservatism our Founders Envisioned’ 3. To Our Friends at (The) National Review 4. An Open Letter to Jim DeMint ———————————————————————- 1. In defense of capitalism The GOP has gone off the reservation. Capitalism should be defended. That does not mean everything Romney did at Bain Capital must be defended. And it sure as heck does not mean we should suddenly be okay with the President’s handling of General Motors. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin wants Romney to release his tax records and provide proof of his job creation numbers. God bless her. Just when this was starting to look like a coronation with 2.01% of delegates selected . . . Please click here for the rest of the post. 2. Rick Santorum: A Massively Expanded Welfare State is ‘The Genuine Conservatism our Founders Envisioned’ Despite strident opposition from supporters who maintain that Rick Santorum is a “true conservative” in the mold of – you guessed it – Ronald Reagan, the already huge mountain of evidence that he is, at heart, a ‘big-government conservative’ continues to grow. Please click here for the rest of the post. 3. To Our Friends at (The) National Review So with New Hampshire behind us (and with any luck, never again in front of us), and with my tendency to be overloaded with life to the point at which I catch up on things I meant to write two to fifty-two weeks after they are timely, I wanted to say something about the controversy which was and is best described as “National Romney Online.” For those of you who don’t keep up on conservative tendencies to engage in circular firing squads, a summary is in order; for those of you who couldn’t give a rat’s anus, best just to skip this diary altogether. In short, National Review — which backed Mitt Romney in 2008 after months and years of not-so-coyly talking him up — and which has not, in fairness, endorsed anyone as a publication yet, is perceived to be carrying water for the Mittster this time around. The battle was joined when Ramesh Ponnuru — arguably the brightest of National Review’s lights, and the editor with the greatest credibility among mainstream conservatives — endorsed Romney, albeit not without qualifications; the battle escalated when the publication as a whole went full-metal William Foster on Newt Gingrich for a thousand and one sins against conservatism and electability. In passing, the magazine took shots at Ron Paul (who hasn’t?), Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry; then took time to praise Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum, whose only apparent problem was a lack of executive experience. The didactic tone at the end of the piece seemed almost calculated to irritate any reader not yet enraged by the closing of the piece. Please click here for the rest of the post. 4. An Open Letter to Jim DeMint By the numbers, we are yet very early in the presidential primaries. 1144 delegates are needed to sew up the nomination, and depending how you count these things, Mitt Romney has maybe 13 delegates after finishing Iowa in a de facto tie with Rick Santorum and thumping Ron Paul in New Hampshire last night. But presidential primary races are often about perception: like wars, you more often win them by convincing the other side that further resistance is futile than by total, to-the-last-man annihilation. And so the coming South Carolina primary is widely recognized as the last realistic chance to stop Romney, or at least visibly slow his momentum and eliminate the divisions among conservative candidates that have thus far precluded a unified opposition. Romney has been lining up endorsements (including SC Governor Nikki Haley), money and favorable press from conservative journalists to create an air of inevitability that he hopes will end this race by Florida, if not South Carolina. I think it is fair to say that a great many grassroots conservative activists view the prospect of a Romney candidacy with varying shades of dismay. Please click here for the rest of the post.
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Morning Briefing for January 12, 2012
Today would be Alexander Hamilton’s 257th birthday. I would also like to say Happy Birthday to my mother, who is not 257, and to my sister, who probably isn’t either. Today is also National Step In A Puddle And Splash Your Friends Day , truly a sacred tradition. No More Go-along-to-Get-along | Gov. Rick Perry “For far too long, insiders from both parties have played these games. Talk up fiscal responsibility, but spend big. Talk about a federal government that fulfills its basic responsibilities, but then vote to expand it beyond all recognition so that it cannot possibly do so. Talk about doing what’s right, but then do what the establishment wants instead.” Lucas: Hollywood Wouldn’t Back My Film Due to All Black Cast | Newsbusters “Hollywood said, ‘No.’ Just remember that the next time some movie star or film director calls Republicans or members of the Tea Party racist.” DNC chair blames Tea Party for Tucson shooting | Washington Examiner “Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., speaking in New Hampshire this morning, reminded her audience of the tragic Tucson shooting last year — and also insinuated that the Tea Party, which she said regards political opponents as “the enemy,” has enhanced divisiveness in Congress and had something to do with the shooting, at least indirectly.” Major Victory for Religious Liberty Against Obama Administration Attack | NRO “In its unanimous ruling today in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church v. EEOC, the Supreme Court held that the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause bar ministers from invoking the employment-discrimination laws against the religious organizations that employ them.” Today’s Word Of The Day comes courtesy Wordsmith.org . Pitch perfect, post primary. Dysthymia (dis-THY-mee-uh): A mild depression.
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Daily Links – January 11, 2012
