"In every important respect the Obama plan and the Romney plan are identical"

The Cato Institute has released a new video explaining why Mitt Romney's attempts to campaign against ObamaCare shouldn't be taken seriously:

Comments

[Woodrow Wilson]

My sons!

[Colin]

He'll still likely get the nomination. The field's pretty barren at the moment.

[John]

He has zero chance of getting the nomination. Bare field or no. As 2012 approaches and Obama looks weaker the field won't be so barren. He is dead man walking.

[Jeffersonian]

And deserves to be. Romneycare is a disaster for MA, and Mitt needs to take his lumps for it.

[John]

Yes he does. Maybe if he would come out and have some kind of tear filled mea culpa about how badly he messed up and how he was fooled into thinking Romneycare was a good idea and how sorry he is, he might be fit to hold some office somewhere. But he should never be President.

[MNG]

He should do what he has done on every other major issue in this nation depending on what office he was running for: flipity flop!

I never supported that mess in MA. Oh, and let me tell you how much I loves me some Jesus!

[John]

That is what he will try. But I don't think it will work.

[MNG]

I think Romney and Palin are the only two GOP pols I have actual contempt for (interestingly I think my Dem field in that area is larger). They are such cowardly panderers ("all of them1").

[John]

Whatever. You will have contempt for whoever they nominate.

[MNG]

Which is why I admired McCain so much, and oft expressed (here) my admiration for him during the primary and after. See John, you've shown time and time you can assume what liberals "must" have thought about a variety of issue...

[MNG]

Had McCain run in 2004 or 2000, against Kerry, Obama or Gore, he would have had my vote. Obama served a function imo: he turned out eight years of arrogant incompetence. That did not make him the better man.

[baghoh20]

I think the 2 term limit did that, so you must have voted for the hopey part. The changy was guaranteed.

[BakedPenguin]

You also (surprisingly, to me) had favorable things to say about Guiliani.

[Groovus Maximus]

There are times my prescience amazes me John.

Remember this ?

[El Pared?n]

Agreed.

[Ragin Cajun]

Every primary election needs a Hillary, some frontrunner that the eventual nominee will beat, and thus creating a narrative for the general.

[Tulpa]

Except for 2000 for both parties, 1996 for the GOP, 1992 for the Dems, ...

[John Thacker]

1992 for the Dems

Bad example IMO.

At this point in that election cycle, the press had annointed Bradley, Gephardt, Mario Cuomo, Gore, and a few others as front-runners. Mostly what happened is that all of them chose not to run when it looked like GHWB was unbeatable.

[Tulpa]

As 2012 approaches and Obama looks weaker the field won't be so barren. He is dead man walking.
reply to this

If Obama looks any weaker than he does now, he's liable to just blow away.

Then you guys will have to deal with Joe Biden.

[Joe Biden]

This is fucking huge!

[Death Panelist]

I will be epically pissed if I have to vote for him to get the current one out of office.

[robc]

There are usually more than 2 guys on my ballot.

[Death Panelist]

My goal is to get rid of Obama, not help him stay. I will never find the perfect candidate anyway, so I will probably have to vote for the lesser of the electable evils come November 2012.

[Statistician]

That's a good strategy if you expect to be the tie-breaking vote; otherwise, not so much.

[Cunctator]

The lesser of two evils is still evil

[Jamie]

Don't worry about it - no need to be pissed. Between now and '12, he's mathematically guaranteed to have been on both sides of some curret issue you care about. Just ignore the other one, lie back, and think of tax cuts.

[&]

Didn't Hillary have things locked up at this time four years ago?

[J sub D]

Mitt Romney will say anything necessary to win the next election. He displays no core principles whatsoever.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....02805.html

[John]

Pretty much. And on top of that he is an idiot son. His father was President of AMC. But he still claims to be a self made man who understand business. I really can't stand him.

[BakedPenguin]

My personal favorite Romney moment was (IIRC) when he walked away from a person in a wheelchair who questioned him about medical marijuana. He wouldn't even stick around to defend his reasons and say something like "I sympathize with your plight, but..." he ran like a fucking coward.

What a piece of shit.

[Tulpa]

Probably because he knew he was being set up. His position on med MJ stinks, obviously, but I can understand his frustration when he walked over to what he thought was going to be a nice photo-op with a disabled person and instead got a bear trap sprung in his face.

[Groovus Maximus]

It's good for politicians to have their feathers ruffled, keeps them on their toes. Is it fair for pols to be wary and on the defensive all the time? Probably not. But it's the price of leadership; exposing that they can make mistakes and see how they react is very telling.

[Tulpa]

I agree, but his reaction hardly makes him a coward. And if you look at the video of Hillary's encounter with that guy, where she tried to respond as BakedPenguin suggests, it just makes things worse because then the guy started going into details about his plight, and THEN she just walks away.

You're going to have to walk away at some point...better to do it before the guy pours out his guts to you. He wasn't going to let any of the pols get away on good terms unless they agreed with him (as Ron Paul did).

[Cab]

I don't know, the "States are incubators" argument is pretty valid. As for being insolvent, all he has to do is say it was changed by a Democrat Governor after he left office which led to the insolvency. Health care isn't really going to be his problem, overall credibility is still his Achilles heel.

[John]

But the fact that he enacted a virtual clone to Obamacare and then is going to run saying Obamacare is bad, is going to stick an arrow right in that heel.

[TrickyVic]

I think he's likely to run on the I'm experienced with madated health care and will fix Obamacare based on lessons learned from Romneycare.

The republicans may see him as the best person to fix Obamacare.

[Pablo]

I don't think it's so valid if an idea has already been tried by other states and has failed. MA could have looked to the experiences of states like Tennessee and Maine, which tried to achieve universal health insurance, and easily seen what was going to happen.

[Gabe]

Romney is a neo-con...fuckem

[MNG]

All pols pander in the general election, but actual pandering to the base in the primaries is always the most pathetic thing to witness...It's a game of "one upmanship" that reaches nearly absurd heights, and Romney in 2007-8 was riding those heights like a surfer on the top of tsunami.

[P Brooks]

the "States are incubators" argument is pretty valid.

It would be, if anybody ever actually said, "Holy crap- THAT sure didn't work; we'd better scrap it, and try something different."

[Tulpa]

That's exactly how Romney can extricate himself from this conundrum. He can say that the MassCare program was an experiment that didn't work, and should be repealed, but at least he was trying to do something to get coverage for people who couldn't get insurance. And he wasn't experimenting with the entire country, much less with a plan that was shoved down an unwilling public's throats; MassCare was popular with legislators and the public when it was passed.

The only reasons I can see for him not to take this position are that he's afraid of being accused of waffling or that his ego is just too pampered and big for him to admit he did something that didn't work out. I don't think the accusations of waffling are going to be nearly as damaging as the accusations of hypocrisy are going to be, so that leaves the ego thing, which I become more and more convinced is the undoing of every politician who makes it to this level.

[baghoh20]

This one issue dooms Romney, and rightfully so. We have had 3 Bush terms already. I want conservative (liberty directed) policy, I think we have overdone the "compassion" crap. This government won't get smaller with his type.

[Jed]

ObamaCare = 2,700 pages
RomneyCare = 70 pages

Guess which one is going to take away more rights, increase taxes, etc?

Romney's plan is focused on giving individual's responsibility and choice. Obama's plan is focused on taking that away from Americans.

Romney's plan does use some federal funds to help pay for insurance plans for the poor. However, all states get some funds, and Romney simply redirected funds that were going to hospitals to cover the uninsured to help make sure everyone could afford insurance. No new taxes. ObamaCare? Trillions in new taxes.

Bottom line, the difference is less in the structure than in the underlying principles.

There's a rumor that the actual author of ObamaCare is resigning at the end of this term because Romney is getting more credit for his plan than he is. How ironic! Romney wasn't even consulted.

[Tulpa]

Other than Gary Johnson, who has zero chance of getting the nomination, every other potential GOP nominee even on the horizon is worse than Romney. Palin, Huckabee, and Jindal combine the worst of social conservatism and fiscal liberalism. Crist and Perry are "moderate" corporatist scum. Paul Ryan has talked a good game during the runup to Obamacare passing, but his prior record is not so good. Did I miss anyone?

[Groovus Maximus]

Haley Barbour has expressed interest.

[John Thacker]

Jindal is not a fiscal liberal. He does not belong in the same sentence as Huckabee. (Heck, Palin doesn't belong in the same sentence as Huckabee; her tenure as governor was acceptable and neither fiscally liberal nor socially conservative. Most of the weirdness came after she was picked as VP and vituperatively attacked.) Reason org has said very good things about Jindal shrinking government in Louisiana, and one doesn't obtain higher bond ratings for a state's debt by being fiscally liberal.

Mitch Daniels is fairly good.

Not saying he's great, but you didn't mention Pawlenty even if only to bash him.

I'm not entirely sure what you hate about Perry so much; the only thing I really know about him is toll roads, which I have zero problem with.

[Forrest]

Perry also tried to mandate HPV vaccines in school children at the behest of a pharma company that contributed to his campaign.

I'll prepare a full response on Jindal momentarily. I did forget about Daniels and Pawlenty...a lot hinges on whether Pawlenty caves to the Vikings on the stadium issue.

[$]

Tulpa = Forrest?

Oh, you are SO busted!

[Jamie]

her tenure as governor was acceptable and neither fiscally liberal nor socially conservative.

I'll agree that she has no discernable policy preferences on pretty much anything, but being a 1/2 term "spending more time with my ego" governor of the most socialist welfare queen in the union doesn't seem especially conservative.

And being completely unable to deal with the national spotlight in the last run seems like a bad recommendation for getting another shot at it. Hell, William Shatner has more relevant experience.

But, also, too, I can see her cleavage from here! So that's a plus.

[John Thacker]

I don't understand your comments about Jindal. Reason Foundation has many good things to say about him.

It makes it difficult to take you seriously.

[Tulpa]

He's another one of the universal health coverage hounds. He's not in the same category as Huckabee, correct.

[John Thacker]

He's another one of the universal health coverage hounds.

You don't mean the current bill, of course.

Ah, you mean this?

Sorry, I'm not going to get exercised about refundable healthcare tax credits. Universal HSAs with are superior to our current system.

[John]

Tulpa thinks anyone who is not an atheist is a fiscal liberal.

[Tulpa]

OK, where did that come from? Most atheists are fiscal liberals, so it's a pretty bleak outlook for fiscal nonliberalism if that's the case.

[Contemplationist]

I beg to differ. Gary Johnson is the polished, accomplished and presentable Ron Paul. I lament that he hasn't been boosted by all the libertarian organs yet. He needs visibility. He can win.

[Jed Merrill]

Wasn't it the conservative Heritage Foundation that Romney consulted in coming up with his plan?

RomneyCare probably would be unconstitutional if it were enacted at a federal level, but not at the State level. From a tax and spend perspective, it is far leaner and better thought out.

Definitely disingenuous to say the plans are identical. There are more differences than similarities.

The most important difference of many is Americans hate ObamaCare, but most Massachusetts residents still support RomneyCare.

[Tulpa]

The cosmotarian-CATO lovefest for Obama is lasting longer than I thought it would.

[John Thacker]

Disliking Romney and RomneyCare is in no way equivalent to a lovefest for Obama.

That makes as much sense as saying that Huckabee and Jindal are similar fiscally.

[T]

So, MA residents support the program that is driving the state into insolvency? Good to know. Everything is just peachy, then.

[Vajazzling]

Awwww. But the Cato Institute said!

[Anonymous Backstabber]

What's happening in the photo at the 30 second mark? Is Mitt slitting his wrist or what?

[Forrest]

Ah, the smell of internecine right-wing catfights in the evening.

[John]

Ah the smell of liberal retardation in the evening.

[HereWeGoAgain]

The GOP has an amazing ability to nominate exactly the wrong candidate for any given Presidential election. When they needed to be running someone with a strong grasp of economics who could debate rings around Obama on matters of the economic collapse -- they put up an economic illiterate like McCain. When they needed to hit Obama hard on his inexperience, McCain nominated a 1/2 term governor with no foreign policy savvy for Veep. So I have no doubt of their ability to fuck up the next election, where Obamacare should be a huge advantage for them, by nominating the one guy who was responsible for the same damn kind of program.

[RM]

Kind of funny that McCain is the one that gets the hated RINO label? What's the worst he's done? McCain-Fiengold? Voting against the first Bush tax cuts because there were spending cuts included?

[Tulpa]

They were playing to the inexperience factor of Obama when they nominated McCain. Palin was almost certainly a cynical ploy to win over women who supported Hillary.

I seriously doubt any Republican could have beaten Obama. Someone who could "debate rings around him" on economics would have been dismissed as "unserious", assuming their position was anything resembling support for a free market.

The electorate was seriously pissed at Bush and the GOP for several reasons, and Obama is too good a campaigner, and didn't have the sorry track record he's going to have in 2012.

[SIV]

Palin was almost certainly a cynical ploy to win over women who supported Hillary.

[SIV]

That is the way she was overtly pitched at her introduction as VEEP candidate.
Palin was brought on board to prevent an overwhelming landslide loss and to give the conservative base as sense of having a stake in the election.

[Tulpa]

That too, but there were many more qualified Republicans who could have done that and provide much fewer openings for mockery than she did -- the difference is that they were saddled with penes. There's no denying the Palin nomination backfired big time on McCain.

[replica watches]

good post