Mitt Romeny's Speech on His Own Health Care Crisis: "a sincere, intelligent, cogent, informed political disaster"

Check out the big pith on Jonah Goldberg.

I missed it. Here's a good/bad spin: Romney may be planning to run as himself, a smart technocrat with conservative leanings but moderate gestures.

Will the truth work? Eh, sometimes, strangely enough, the truth is your best bet.

So much for the good news. In general everyone thinks his speech was a disaster, chiefly because he refused to confess error. He acknowledged that everyone wanted him to do so, but he couldn't, as that wouldn't be "honest."

I don't know if I buy the line I myself peddled previously: That Romney's best strategy (let's put aside the truth and talk strategy) is to confess error and repudiate Romney 2007-2008. I think it's too late for that, or at least that wouldn't really help. As today's speech demonstrated (I gather), he really doesn't believe he did wrong, so I guess... kudos for being honest about it? I guess? Maybe?

The individual mandate continues to destroy him. He made a case that this is actually a conservative idea -- and indeed, it was discussed by conservatives as a conservative idea in years past. For example: Newt Gingrich. A conservative case can be made for it -- people should be responsible for their own health care, rather than relying upon the state to take care of them when they get ill.

Unfortunately, a conservative case can also be made against it: The state shouldn't compel people to do this or that thing, supposedly in their own interest.

And the latter position has won, and not by a little bit. On a federal level, the mandate seems unconstitutional (not sure if the Supreme Court will agree, but it looks unconstitutional), and as that's our easiest and maybe best route to undoing ObamaCare, you're not going to find many conservatives defending this bad element.

So... he's pretty stuck. I guess he could make his argument that in 2006-2007, when he endorsed the individual mandate, all of the various constitutional and political issues weren't fully engaged and he didn't appreciate the encroachment on liberty the mandate represents... but of course he's not doing that.

He doesn't seem to understand that by defending RomenyCare he's inadvertently defending ObamaCare and under no circumstances can we have a standard-bearer defending ObamaCare.

posted by Ace at 05:31 PM

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