Mitt’s Pro-‘Obamacare’ Hire Irks Right

06 June 2012 |permalink | email article

LIFE is becoming more complicated for Mitt Romney. Hard-line conservatives are furious with him for choosing former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt to chair his presidential transition team. As Talking Points Memo has reported Leavitt has committed two deadly sins. He’s encouraged state leaders to implement the health care exchanges required by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act—and he’s profited from it. Many top conservatives consider that apostasy. They believe the health care law must be completely eliminated – even parts people like and including parts conservatives have supported in the past. Through a public records request the Wall Street Journal reported a trove of emails which show that the former Massachusetts governor defended the insurance mandate for state residents when he signed the bill on April 12, 2006, and that night signed the law and sent an email thanking a top aide, saying the law would help “hundreds of thousands of people…have healthier and happier lives.” In a July meeting with a bipartisan group of governors, Leavitt called exchanges “a very practical solution to a problem that needs to be resolved.” In February he told Politico that “the Affordable Care Act needs to be repealed, period.” But he is not an anti-‘Obamacare’ fire breather that meets conservative litmus tests. Romney 2006 is a far cry from his judgments and flip-flops today.

What They Said

“The picture for America in 2012 bears a stunning resemblance to the great mistake of 1937, when F.D.R. prematurely slashed spending, sending the U.S. economy—which had actually been recovering fairly fast until that point—into the second leg of the Great Depression. In F.D.R.’s case, however, this was an unforced error, since he had a solidly Democratic Congress. In President Obama’s case, much thought not all of the responsibility for the policy wrong turn lies with a completely obstructionist Republican majority in the House.—New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, noting that while there’s a Democrat in the White House, for all practical purposes, this is already the economic policy of Republican dreams. 

Former President Bill Clinton on Monday accused Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the Republican Congress of having “adopted Europe’s economic policies of austerity.” He said Obama has the “right” economic policy to promote job growth and long-term budget restraint.”

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