Obama: RomneyCare Is Kind Of Cool, Don't You Think?

Via Ben Domenech, this is going to leave a mark.

President Obama pointedly praised on Monday the healthcare program Republican Mitt Romney installed as governor of Massachusetts.

Obama singled out Romney for praise over his state's healthcare plan, which shares similarities with the president's national healthcare reform, in a bit of backhanded praise for the likely Republican presidential candidate.

"I agree with Mitt Romney, who's recently said he's proud of what he accomplished in Massachusetts," Obama said at a gathering of governors at the White House.

I'm sure Team Romney would like to spin this as proof Obama doesn't want to run against Mitt because he has the best shot at beating him. The problem is they can't do that without admitting that RomneyCare sucks. So they will have to spend a lot of time making the case that RomneyCare and ObamaCare aren't the same at all.

The problem with this is exactly what I wrote about last April.

He (Romney) might still be able to come up with a convincing narrative to explain the differences between MassCare and ObamaCare as well as his role in the former. But then the debate will be about Mitt and what he thought then vs. now and whether he can be reliable going forward. Meanwhile the focus will be off Obama and the damage done by this health care scheme.

Republicans need the issue to be a clean and clear choice...we have to nominate someone who was opposed to ObamaCare from the start. Only then will the focus stay on Obama and what he has wrought.

As I've said many times before, I'm not a big Mitt fan but I'm not a hater either. He's just not the guy this time if you want to make repealing ObamaCare (and its job killing nature) an issue in the 2012 election.

posted by DrewM. at 01:56 PM

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