From The Hill:
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) backed the plan for GM and Chrysler put forth yesterday by President Obama, the candidate Romney may face in the 2012 presidential election.
“I think a lot of people expected the president just to cave, write a check, and just hope for the better,” Romney said Tuesday morning on CNN. “I think he’s expressing some backbone on this.”
Now, to back up a bit, Romney has long been a favorite of the online GOP chattering class. Personally, I don’t get it. The guy had every advantage in the world for the 2008 primaries and still got trounced. He simply lacks the ability to connect with voters.
But I digress.
Romney has been getting a decent amount of press lately as the person best suited to carry the conservative mantle into 2012.
But this latest proclamation is already strike two since Obama took office.
Strike one? Earlier this month, Reason Magazine touted Romney’s health care program in Massachusetts as a failure:
There is both good news and bad news for advocates of market-based approaches to health care.
The good news is that there is a growing recognition across the political spectrum that Massachusetts’ experiment with TonySopranoCare – otherwise called universal health coverage — is unworkable and unsustainable.
Three years ago the Bay State started forcing individuals and employers to purchase health coverage on the threat of penalties and fines. At the same time, it mandated insurance companies to sell Cadillac coverage (complete with in vitro fertilization and hair prostheses) to everyone regardless of health status. The first inflated demand for health care. The second diminished supply because not too many health care underwriters can do business under the prescribed conditions. The upshot? Massachusetts’ delivered a captive market to a cartelized insurance industry – something that some of us had predicted at the outset would lead to spiraling health care costs.
So as Governor, Romney devised a universal health care system that is now being touted as a failure by both the left and right. And we now learn he has no problem with the President of the United States playing the role of de facto CEO of Fortune 500 companies.
Romney as a conservative is a sham. Eventually, some will learn to accept it.
