Once upon a time, Mitt Romney liked health insurance mandates. Then he started sucking up to the new Republican orthodoxy.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Over the past several years, Mitt the Moderate has contorted himself to the point where he's been caving in on himself like a black hole. And, as with a black hole and light, no particle (or even wave) of credibility can escape.

This is especially true with health-care reform.

As you probably know, when he was governor of Massachusetts Romney advocated and signed into law a reform package that is basically the precursor of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), what's come to be known as Romneycare, or Masscare. Once upon a time, pre-Obama, that was the standard (and orthodox) Republican position on health-care reform, a market-based system with an individual mandate.

But of course that is no longer the standard Republican position, and so Romney, as part of his larger effort to remake himself as a conservative with sufficient ideological fervor to appeal to the Republican base in order to win the party's presidential nomination, has had to lie, lie, lie his way out of his own past. Here's Jon Chait:

In 2009, Mitt Romney had a problem. He was running for the Republican presidential nomination, and the towering achievement of his governorship in Massachusetts — health-care reform — had been embraced by President Obama. Romneycare played almost no role in Romney's 2008 presidential run, but the emergence of the issue onto the national agenda threatened to link Romney with a president Republicans had already come to loathe.

His solution was simple. He seized upon the one major difference between his plan and Obama's, which was that Obama favored a public health insurance option. The public plan had commanded enormous public attention, and Romney used to it frame Masscare as a conservative reform relying on private health insurance, and against Obama's proposal to create a government plan that, Romney claimed, would balloon into a massive entitlement. Andrew Kaczynski collects several televised appearances and one op-ed in which Romney holds up Masscare as a national model.

This tactic backfired when Obama had to jettison the public plan, and Republicans came to focus on the individual mandate as the locus of evil in Obamacare. What was once a Republican idea in good standing was now, suddenly, unconstitutional and the greatest threat to freedom in American history.

This left Romney in an awkward spot.

It's hard to run for president as the advocate of an idea that your party considers the greatest threat to freedom in history. His response was to simply revise the past, much as he did with abortion. Romney now claimed he had never advocated a federal version of his Masscare program.

Ah, but of course he did, and we have more than enough evidence to prove it. Like, for example, when he said during a 2008 Republican debate that he doesn't just like mandates but thinks they're fine for national health care:

Charles Gibson (moderator): But Governor Romney's system has mandates in Massachusetts, although you backed away from mandates on a national basis.

Romney: No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.

Fred Thompson: I beg your pardon? I didn't know you were going to admit that. You like mandates.

Romney: Let me -- let me -- oh, absolutely.

Yes, that's Fred Thompson, awake and engaged enough to be astonished that Romney would be so honest about supporting mandates.

And it didn't stop if 2008. Kaczynski shows that Romney thought his Masscare could be a model for national reform well into 2009, that is, even after Obama became president. And he has three clips to prove it. Sure, Romney was against a public option, but he was for Masscare as a national program and specifically for the individual mandate.

All of which is to say, Romney's more recent denials and contortions, claiming that he never thought Masscare was a model for national reform, including the mandate, amount to a massive lie, self-rejection for the sake of courting votes, a shameless pander to the new far-right orthodoxy of the Republican Party.

Just what you'd expect, in other words, from Willard Mitt Romney.

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Santorum keeps hammering Romney on health care

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Ever so slowly, and ever so reluctantly, Republicans are lining up in typical jackbooted fashion behind Mitt Romney. The still-feisty Gingrich is an exception, of course, and he's been hammering Romney for some time now as a "Massachusetts moderate," but so too is Santorum, who is hoping for a comeback, post-Iowa, with strong showings in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri tomorrow, strong enough perhaps to let him blow past Newt into second place, and, with Newt apparently on the decline again, to allow him to take up the mantle of leading anti-Romney, the only credible conservative alternative left in the race.

And it's funny, in a way, how while Newt is meeting resistance from conservatives (e.g., Dick Armey) who would rather he shut his trap, Santorum keeps hammering away seemingly without much blowback -- and hammering away right at Romney's main weakness for conservatives:

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, hoping for some much needed momentum heading into the next round of primaries and caucuses, leveled some of his harshest criticisms yet at Mitt Romney over the issue of healthcare and the repeal of "Obamacare."

Speaking near the campus of the Mayo Clinic, Santorum said the former Massachusetts governor was "dead wrong" and "the worst possible person" to put up on what he called the "most fundamental issue" of the campaign.

"I really don't find any legitimate reason why [Romney] would oppose [Obamacare], because the plan he put together in Massachusetts is in fact Obamacare on the state level," Santorum said during a strongly worded healthcare-centered speech, adding that Romney "should not be the nominee of our party."

He added that Romney's only argument against Obama's healthcare plan is that the issue should be a state issue instead of a federal one.

"It's a very weak argument to go and make to the American public," he said, adding that Romney is "uniquely unqualified and I would argue disqualified" from making the case against the nation's healthcare plan.

He's right, of course. Obamacare is basically Romneycare. Actually, it is Romneycare. But why is he able to get away with it while Newt suffers?

It could be that Santorum isn't taken as seriously as Gingrich is. No one really thinks Santorum could actually win the nomination, whereas Gingrich is, or at least is perceived to be, a serious threat to Romney.

Also, Gingrich's attacks threaten to weaken Romney's appeal to independents and white working-class voters (including formerly Reagan Democrats), because while he's calling Romney a moderate he's also exposing him -- correctly, for the most part -- as a vulture capitalist who cares not a whit for the middle class, let alone for the poor. The risk is that Santorum's attacks will end up depressing conservative enthusiasm and turnout, but it's pretty clear that conservatives will still come out for Romney in the end, and so they're not nearly as much of a threat to Romney's electability as Gingrich's.

Still, Santorum's attacks could hurt Romney significantly, not just by depressing turnout but by reinforcing the deep divide in today's Republican Party between the pro-Romney establishment and the anti-Romney rest of the party. And if Newt can't recover and Santorum does indeed (re-)emerge as a viable anti-Romney choice for conservatives, these attacks could continue well past Super Tuesday and perhaps even all the way to the convention.

Romney's already got enough trouble balancing his faux conservatism and moderate record, trying to appeal both to the right and to the center, not to mention coming across as something other than an out-of-touch rich douchebag who can't connect to ordinary folk and who actually has something resembling a human soul. He hardly needs Santorum to keep reminding voters -- conservative Republican voters -- that he implemented Obamacare long before Obamacare.

Keep it coming, Rick!

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Behind the Ad: Gingrich super PAC attacks Romney on health care

By Richard K. Barry 

(Another installment in our "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: Winning Our Future, Newt Gingrich's Super PAC, has said it will spend $6 million on ads to draw attention to Mitt Romney's health care law in Massachusetts. (Gingrich attacks Romney.)

Where: Florida, prior to next week's primary

What's going on: Despite the fact that Romney seems most vulnerable on the issue of his wealth and record at Bain Capital, the whole RomneyCare thing has hardly gone away. Gingrich is at least smart enough to know that seeing how it plays on top of everything else may not be a bad strategy.

The ad, no surprise, depicts Romney as a Massachusetts moderate in lockstep with President Obama, which will surely be red meat for Gingrich's growing base of Tea Party support. 

As we know, Romney did a pretty effective number on Gingrich in Iowa with his Super PAC money, so it seems obvious that Newt will push back with whatever he can find in Florida and beyond, now that he has another $5 million from his casino mogul friend Sheldon Adelson to play with.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)