Mitt Romney threw his hat into the 2012 ring today by announcing a presidential exploratory committee, a clear first step toward a declaration of his candidacy. There are a number of obstacles that Romney will face in a 2012 bid, but they all seem to start and stop with that pesky health care bill he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts:
Mr. Romney brings with him a number of liabilities, the largest of which is the Massachusetts health-care bill he signed into law five years ago Tuesday. Republican opponents say the Bay State law is strikingly similar to President Barack Obama’s national health-care law, with its menu of private health-care policies that the uninsured can purchase with government assistance and its mandate that nearly everyone buy health insurance. Democratic activists are planning a series of “thank you” events in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Iowa Tuesday marking the day Mr. Romney signed the guarantee of near-universal health-insurance access into law.
If I’m Romney’s campaign manager, I don’t see a good way around this, except if Romney can just be ineffably handsome at every moment for the next 18 months. Politically speaking, it’s pretty clear cut that he approved health care legislation that not only looks a lot like Obamacare, but was in fact the basis for Obamacare.
The only possible reply is to start talking about how Massachusetts is a small, white state, and that the federal government had nothing to do with it, and that “we did what was best for our folks at the time,” and that “we never would’ve dreamed of doing this on a national scale.” Still, there are plenty of indicting parallels for the likes of Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels (both sitting governors in small, white states, who didn’t enact Obamacare) to draw.
Because of a neat piece of legislation that Romney signed five years ago, he is starting ten feet behind the pack in this campaign, and though he is a skilled politician, I don’t see him catching up in time.
Mack Lannahan 