Romney then announced that we should go to war with Iran, but he’ll be doing it in a way that no one dies. And it’s free. And he’s repealing meals involving pizza and beer, but replacing them with meals involving pizza and beer but no calories. :rolleyes:
It really is interesting that the party of tanstaafl believes so much more deeply in the concept of a free lunch than the “socialist” Dems do.
Where was this? I watched the MtP interview today discussed in the OP’s link, but didn’t see him mention war with Iran in any other words that Obama hasn’t used-- ie, all options are on the table.
…
So the idea is to get all the benefits without paying for them. Just like the two unfunded Bush wars.
Oh, and a tax cut too.
Think of Rainbow My Little Pony. Stars and colors - everything is wonderful in Mitt’s imaginary world.
This is a thought that I’ve frequently had.
You don’t remember? It was after the healthcare announcement but before the beer and pizza announcement.
Which should have been followed by:
Gregory: AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT OBAMA HAS SAID YOU STUPID FUCK! So AGAIN how would you anything you do result in a different outcome? Would your hair scare them into being better, you empty windbag?
So when Romney said as recently as a week ago that he would “repeal and replace Obamacare,” he actually meant he would not repeal Obamacare. And your view is that when he says he will not repeal Obamacare, it means he will repeal it if a repeal bill passes. This is really something. Romney has transcended mere flip-flopping to become a sort of Schrodinger’s Candidate, simultaneously holding all positions on an issue.
Gregory is waaaay too nice and jovial to host this program. They need someone at least as good as Russert, preferably better.
I didn’t hit on this in the OP, but all of this touches on what I’ve been saying throughout much of this campaign: chiefly, (1) that Mitt doesn’t really want to undo health care reform, and (2) that there is absolutely NO WAY WHATSOEVER - none, zero, zilch, nada - to reconcile his campaign promise to repeal the ACA with his actual record of an IDENTICAL state-level HC reform bill for which he had been on the record as championing as a national model.
All of which is to say that Mitt secretly wants health care reform, yet his party decries any attempts at that as some kind of evil socialist pandering. When he shows his true colors, as in this interview here, that puts him at odds with the GOP and Tea Party bases, which he needs in order to win election.
Can I have my calorie-free pizza and beer with no gluten? Thanks, Mitt!
Precisely, as the economist Paul Krugman points out ObamaRomneyCare is a three legged stool: Suppose you want to guarantee that insurance is available to people with pre-existing conditions. Well, you can establish community rating, requiring that insurance companies make the same policies available to everyone. But if you stop there, you know what will happen: healthy people will opt out, leaving behind a high-risk, high-cost pool.
So you have to also have a mandate, requiring that people buy insurance. And you can’t do that without subsidies, so that lower-income people can afford their policies.
The inexorable logic of the situation, then, leads to a three-legged stool of community rating + mandate + subsidies = ObamaRomneycare. The US faces the challenge of unsustainable increases in health care costs, driven our inefficient medical system, an aging population and high administrative overhead. The ACA was a pretty limited attempt to address the problem: the public option was disallowed. It does have some solid cost controls. But it’s really only a first step.
Still, there’s no mystery about what Romney would do. He would sign anything handed to him by a Republican Congress. And Cantor has his own agenda. Romney can correctly say that he kept his campaign promises since they’ve been all over the map and contradictory.
When the Supreme Court ruled in late June that the ACA was Constitutional, Romney said he would “act to repeal it” on his first day in office. I found this on his website on a page titled “Mitt Romney: I Will Repeal Obamacare” with a URL ending Mitt-Romney-I-Will Repeal-Obamacare. Sounds like he was saying it was one of his top priorities. What he meant by that was parts of it are good and won’t be repealed. I understand he’s said positive things about some of the concepts and is only pretending to oppose the law to get votes, but the dancing hippos in Fantasia executed better pivots than this.
www.mittromney.com/news/press/2012/06/mitt-romney-i-will-repeal-obamacare-0
Hmmm…I wonder which gives a greater incentive to be light on your toes: being chased by hungry crocodiles or being chased by rabid teapartiers?
I put “repeal Obamacare” in the same category as “close Guantanamo” in terms of campaign promises. Both things sound great to the base, but anyone with half a brain knows the president isn’t going to be able to do either.
There are a couple of different questions if you look at it that way: you could argue he shouldn’t have pledged to repeal it in the first place or you could say he might as well have stuck to the pledge since he couldn’t do it anyway. Or you could note that he said “act to repeal,” which is at least a promise about what Romney himself will do if not the ultimate outcome.
Nothing to worry about, folks- Mitt has already flip-flopped back.
There’s a difference?
Good Og, but this has reached the point where even a politically jaded old barnacle like me is beginning to get worked up over it. I know that politicians and shame are mutually exclusive, but at least they used to pretend that the electorate were taking their Ritalin.
(I did like the comment that requested the networks schedule two more debates: Romney v Romney, and Romney v Ryan. And the response that we still wouldn’t have a clue as to what they were about.)
To paraphrase Mark Twain, “If you don’t like Mitt Romney’s policies, just wait a few minutes.” Will someone please tell this guy that the Internet exists? You can’t go on camera and suggest diametrically opposed policies to different audiences and just expect nobody to notice.