BuzzFeed: Republican Presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney often fends off the attacks comparing the similarities between the plan he signed in Massachusetts in 2006 and ObamaCare by saying he took a federalist approach. The former Massachusetts Governor says his plan was done on a state level, where the central theme to both plans, the individual mandate, was a actually a conservative approach.
But in a July 2009 op-ed in USA Today Romney thought the President could learn a thing or two from the plan he signed into law in Massachusetts, including using the individual mandate as an incentive for people to buy insurance.
Oops. Romney wrote:
"Health care cannot be handled the same way as the stimulus and cap-and-trade bills. With those, the president stuck to the old style of lawmaking: He threw in every special favor imaginable, ground it up and crammed it through a partisan Democratic Congress. Health care is simply too important to the economy, to employment and to America's families to be larded up and rushed through on an artificial deadline. There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it."
Then, further into the article, Romney offers his advice on the promotion of an individual mandate:
"First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others."
Tell me again, why must the guy who offered up the individual mandate to Obama and indeed promoted it nationally (contrary to his insistence that he’s completely against it on the national level) be the Republican nominee?! Especially when the evidence speaks for itself time and time again...
BTW, a conservative doesn't have to constantly reinforce that "I'm a conservative." Just saying...
Romney even said he's glad to hear Obama copied Romneycare (by his own words)...
Folks, the Massachusetts moderate practically handed the mandate over to the Illinois radical...and this is who you want for the Republican nominee?! This is much more than a bad vote here or some baggage there. This is the 21st century infringement on individual liberties built atop those of the previous (FDR, LBJ, need I say more?). What a tangled web we will weave if you're content with this. I am not...not at all.
