Is this a sign that he’s given up? Or just a sign of the low esteem he holds for the intelligence of his constituents?
I like the comment in another thread: Romney is as confused as a chameleon on a plaid couch.
It’s his attempt to make Romneycare and Obamacare seem like two completely different things. His hope, probably, is that if he says it enough now that people who don’t care very much to look into healthcare policies will start to believe it’s true, as people are wont to do when politicians say something over and over and over.
“I passed Romneycare because I care about all people. Obama passed Obamacare because he hates freedom. These are not the droids you are looking for.”
I think this is deliberate. He has to draw a distinction between what he did as governor and the ACA for many reasons. This is one step in doing so.
[Ninja’d due to not refreshing the page before posting. But still, the point is, I agree with Happy.]
We’ve done this many times before. Romneycare was statewide and Obamacare is nationwide. If you are a Federalist (like I am) that is a huge difference as Romney/Obamacare may work great in Massachusetts but not necessarily Colorado or Texas or Alaska.
He may sound like Will Ferrell in The Campaign but his objection is IMO that Obamacare is yet another example of the growing Federal government and the dimishing importance of state government.
So if he claims that evidence for his ability to feel empathy is that he passed a law to insure ‘everybody’ (“One hundred percent of the kids in our state had health insurance. I don’t think there’s anything that shows more empathy and care about the people of this country than that kind of record”), then logically he should support a law that accomplishes the same thing with all “the people of this country.”
If he *doesn’t *support a version of Romneycare that actually *does *cover all “the people of this country,” (and not just MA) then he doesn’t get to play that “I have empathy for all the people of this country” card.
I’m not saying he doesn’t go into these speeches with a plan to say the worst thing possible. I’m just saying that there is a position that many Republicans hold that would support Romneycare yet object to Obamacare.
Love that.
Yes. I find it quite amazing that so many on the left seem to be unaware that the Constitution makes great distinction between the role of the individual states and federal governance. It’s as if that think that the U.S. should be treated like a 51st state. As you point out, this has been explained before, more than probably a hundred tomes on this board alone. Still, we get OPs like this one. Yeesh.
The problem here is that if Romney says the Massachusetts health care program shows that he cares about people, then he’s suggesting Obama cares more because Obama backed a federal program that works the same way and will get health insurance to far more people. And Romney opposes that program and has vowed to repeal it, or maybe not the whole thing, or yes, the entire thing.
One can support a program on a state level without saying it should be federalized, although of course in the past Romney has supported ACA-style health care proposals. But that’s not a surprise, is it?
Can you point me to one of these threads? Thank you.
One could take Romney’s comments to mean that he cares about people in Massachusetts, but not so much about people in other states. He’s not running for governor of Massachusetts. He’s running for leader of ALL of the United States. So really, as leader of ALL of the United States, is it a good position for him to be essentially abrogating any and all responsibility for health care to individual states?
I understand that some on the right do feel that the Federal Gov’t should be exceptionally tiny, and that the individual states should be running everything, but, if Romney wants to run on this principle of shrinking the Federal Gov’t to nothingness, and returning all control to the individual states, he should be direct about it and own this political philosophy.
But then that would necessitate Romney taking a direct stand one way or the other.
Isn’t it a bit late to try to make those sort of distinctions?
At first he made it an issue of legislative authority. States have plenary power (subject to the constitutional restrictions), while the federal government has enumerated powers.
Now his argument makes even less sense and will probably gain more traction. Romney care was soft and fuzzy but Obamcare is big government.
He goes on to say that Romnmey care was good because it was somehow tailored to Massachussetts while Obamacare is a one size fits all solution taht doesn’t work for anyone.
At this point he is throwing a series of hail mary’s hoping somethign will ignite dry tinder somewhere. He is trying to remind people how much they hate Obamacare when they don’t hate Obamacare.
Anecdote: My mother is a die hard Republican. She hated Obamacare for knocking out medicare part C. But she recently realized that the donut hole is gone and she thinks it was a pretty good tradeoff because regular medicare is not bad, it just doesn’t have the dental coverage her old medicare part C plan gave her but she now has supplemental insurance to cover everything that her old medicare part C covered and she is generally happier with the results. At the very least, it is not the disaster that her REpublican friends had told her it would be.
This thread isn’t about that.
It’s about Romney’s tortured hand-waving to show he has the human emotion of empathy, not to mention his continuing awkward attempt to distance himself from an insurance plan he once wanted to see go national (before it had Obama’s filthy name attached to it, that is).
How can Romney claim to care for all “the people of this country” because he got “everybody” insured in Massachusetts? But then a law that actually *does *take a step toward getting all “the people of this country” insured (Obamacare) is somehow bad?
Yes, I hope he doubles down on this argument. That the name of the entity on your paycheck is what determines the propriety of enacting what was described as a socialist takeover of healthcare that will literally kill your grandmother. To people who really hate the Affordable Care Act, it will sound like the reason he disapproves of the holocaust is that Hitler wasn’t the Minister-President of Bavaria.
I think it was Marco Rubio who defended Romney on the grounds that people could flee from Massachusetts if they really hated it.
I suspect he is getting ready for when Obama compliments him on Romneycare during the debate.
I know the federalism argument, but that if feeble. If it is good in MA, why isn’t it good for the the entire country? If it is socialism nationally, why isn’t it socialism in MA? If it is good, clearly getting it passed 50 times and not just once is inefficient, and certainly means that some people are going to miss out on the benefits.
Or for that matter, any other state that has no sick people.
I’ve seen this pointed out by Romney’s apologists, but I’ve never seen a quotation from the man himself actually stating–or even implying–that this was his reasoning. Can you provide a cite where Romney actually mentions his plan being acceptable, and Obama’s not, on states’ rights ground?
Conservatives always bring up the Federalist argument to block progress, its been going on for years:
OK, you don’t have to have slavery, but that doesn’t mean we can’t
You may want to have black people in the same schools, but we shouldn’t have too.
You might want to allow black people to register to vote, but don’t make us do it.
But in the end, when you look at the states that are governed by conservatives they rank at the bottom of every measurement of “goodness”: wealth, health, environment, education, child mortality, etc.
So now of course it’s Romneycare might work in Massachusetts, but it wouldn’t work in the south; we have our own way of doing things.
Saint Cad, it’s confusing when you speak out against Big Government, but then praise state power in lieu of federal power. Local government is big government, and much of the role of the feds is in reigning in the big government power of the states. Think of anything at all that the federal government has its finger in, and you’ll find that the states do it too, and ten times more.