You should never drink the bong water.
Here’s a better analogy:
People have pancreatic cancer. They want chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The Democrats accede that. The Republicans, knowing they’d be routed on the issue decide they must compromise with their ideals of letting people die of cancer, propose cryosurgery and claim that radiotherapy and chemotherapy will create a legion of liberal zombies. Several years of people dying of pancreatic cancer later and general sentiment remains that chemotherapy and radiotherapy would be ideal, but the Democrats compromise and admit that cryosurgery can be useful in some instances. The Republicans recoup with a propaganda campaign claiming that cryosurgery is an unconstitional attempt to freeze grandparents and that a far more effective strategy to cure pancreatic cancer is a punch in the gut.
Two decades from now Democrats will try passing the “Human Sacrifices and Holocaust Denial” bill, which will be decried as too left wing and the Republicans will narrowly scrape by with “complete nuclear annihilation” as a more appropriate centrist remedy.
That’s just an analogy though.
On the contrary, they’re quite irrelevant. If they were relevant to this issue, they’d have a seat in the Capitol. They don’t, because Pennsylvania GOP voters like me decided we didn’t want Santorum to represent us anymore. Gingrich isn’t the Speaker anymore because the Republicans we did elect didn’t want him to represent them. Romeny was never even in Congress.
Less than 100 current members of the 435-member House were around in 1994, and that’s counting Dems and Pubs. In the Senate, it’s 26.
So yeah, compared to 20 years ago, it is a bunch of fresh faces.
In particular I think that his insistence that the Mass program is one of personal responsibility and market reform is a bit at odds with his current claim that the ACA is a “government takeover” and an affront to personal liberty.
Also there is nothing in there that indicates that he thinks it should only be done at the state level. There is nothing unique about Mass. with regards to the free rider problem of the pre-ACA health care system. The only way to achieve universal coverage in a free-market system and not have a massive free rider problem is with a mandate. And at one point Romney new that. Whether he still knows it and doesn’t care or forgot it is up to you to decide.