Supporters of Mitt Romney are no strangers to the attacks made on our candidate by President Obama’s surrogates and even fellow conservatives on the subject of “RomneyCare”. The accusations are all too familiar to us;
“There’s no difference between RomneyCare and ObamaCare”
“RomneyCare is socialism!”
“Romney is the architect/father of ObamaCare”
“It’s Mitt Romney’s fault that we have ObamaCare”
MRC’s very own Dr. Jeff Fuller has written an excellent series explaining the major policy differences between MassCare (the actual “RomneyCare”) and ObamaCare, and why Governor Romney’s health care reforms in Massachusetts were anything but socialist. So with the more difficult and technical aspects of MassCare already covered, I’d like to tackle the broader claims that Mitt Romney is to blame for the idea of ObamaCare and that Mitt is the father and architect of ObamaCare.
These attacks can be exposed as inaccurate and completely false. Let’s first address those who say that Mitt Romney is to blame for ObamaCare. I feel this can best be explained away through a simple story:
Let’s say that you, the reader, live in a town. This town has fifty families or households residing in it. Out of the blue, your kids start ignoring their homework and doing other activities instead: texting, playing video games, chatting on their favorite political website (MittRomneyCentral.com), or whatever it might be. As a responsible parent, you see the need to create a plan to get them to do their homework. You know what ultimately motivates your children, so the plan you institute begins to work and your kids start completing their homework again. It’s not perfect, but it works 98% of the time.
Meanwhile, the mayor of your town had actually desired to pass a law on how families enforce homework completion for quite some time. Without talking to you or asking you about what worked and what didn’t in your plan, the mayor passes an ordinance requiring all families to use methods similar to the ones you developed for your kids. He also throws in a bunch of other invasive requirements as well. Next, the mayor starts publicly praising the plan you created for your home and says that it was the inspiration for his law. Naturally, many of the people in the town are angry about being forced to adopt the new methods and are looking for someone to blame. Who should they rightfully be upset with about this new law, you or the mayor?
It seems obvious that the mayor is the one to blame here. You, as the parent who initiated the original plan for your own household, never advocated that your plan be used for the entire town, nor were you consulted by the mayor before he brought about the new law. Why should your fellow townsfolk blame you, regardless of if the plans had similarities or not? It would be unjustified for them to do so. Yet this is precisely what some of our fellow conservative friends are doing when they blame Mitt Romney for ObamaCare.
In case you hadn’t yet noticed the correlation, the mayor in the story represents President Obama and the new town ordinance is ObamaCare. Mitt Romney is represented by you, the parent, and your plan to get your kids to do their homework is MassCare.
Just as it would be unfair to blame the parent in our story for the new town ordinance, it is equally unfair and illogical to blame Mitt Romney for ObamaCare. Regardless of any similarities that exist between the two laws, Governor Romney strongly opposes a Federal takeover of health care and was never consulted by President Obama or Democrats while ObamaCare was being crafted.
Another line of attack that some like to take is to label Romney as the father and/or architect of ObamaCare. Let’s quickly follow that line of thinking to its logical conclusion: if Mitt Romney hadn’t signed MassCare into law, we would not have ended up with ObamaCare. Do any conservatives honestly believe that if it weren’t for MassCare we wouldn’t have ObamaCare today? That idea is absurd and has a very shortsighted view of our political past. A full 13 years before MassCare was signed into law, the Democrats on Capital Hill contemplated a complete reform of the American health care system. Many of you remember HillaryCare, the attempted Federal government takeover of health care in 1993, concocted by Hillary Clinton.
That attempt was ultimately defeated, but it’s clear that the goal was never far out of mind. The proof is that the very next time the Democrats had control of both houses of Congress and the White House they tried again and were successful. They did not need inspiration from MassCare to create ObamaCare. The desire to reform health care on the Federal level had already existed for nearly 20 years and Democrats were anxious for the opportunity to try again.
The blame for ObamaCare lies squarely on the shoulders of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, President Obama, and the Democrat majority that passed it. Mitt Romney did not inspire, design, or support this monstrosity, and a logical and reasonable look at the subject should allow people to come to the same conclusion. Let’s set our sights on the ones who are truly responsible, not a convenient political target.
Well said, Dave! I love a good extended metaphor, especially one that makes the truth so clear. Everyone knew the moment President Obama and other Democrats started “praising” Mitt Romney for his health care plan that it was a political tactic. But they quickly forgot that when it was politically convenient for them, as you said. It’s like how people know Sarah Palin didn’t actually say she could see Russia from her house, but they use the line anyway when they’re trying to discredit her.
For this primary, we really need to deal in whole truths, not one-liners. I hope the American people are truly awake now, awake enough to read entire policy statements on important issues and listen to entire speeches. It’s so important we don’t let the media and fifteen-second soundbites determine our nominee.
compelling article and excellent analogy, thank you!
why aren’t the dems praising hilarycare from 1993 as the inspiration for their plan? (rhetorical question)
the dem’s sardonic praise of romney and his Mass HC plan as attempts to dash his political prospects is abundantly clear. who are they fooling?
Good thoughts Dave.
I suggest adding words to this effect, to distinguish the two plans:
Well in keeping with this analogy, the kids WANT to do their homework, and supported the plan.
It works well for them because only 1 out of 13 of them didn’t use to do their homework, so the others had to do it for him.
Now, he does it for himself, and his parents help him if he doesn’t understand the homework.
Now the plan has as an indirect result, that the kids have to spend a little more time on homework, but it doesn’t totally eat their fun away.
And they still get to have desserts, and have fun when their work is done, but the mayor’s plan takes away all the cake and pie and just leaves pancakes, and only on Sundays.
And under the mayor’s plan, the kids have to do more chores too. But the parents’ plan does no such thing.
Desserts are Medicare payments.
Chores are taxes.
Time spent on homework is taxpayer spending on health care.
While I love your argument, it’s not going to hold much weight with my libertarian family and friends who believe even the MassCare was an unconstitutional atrocity. Additionally, they constantly remind me that during the ’08 election Romney proudly admitted the fact that he was able to get healthcare passed and Hillary Clinton was unable to do so. They believe Mitt’s ultimate plan was to do just as Obama did (to a lesser degree) were he elected.
I wish Mitt would be more adament about healthcare passing whether he signed the document or not. I wish that he would argue that MassCare today was not what he intended. That the document he would have liked to sign into law would’ve withstood the test of time.
@Bryce
Yeah, I guess you just have to point out to your friends and family that they’ll have to take that up with the Constitution of Massachusetts and the state’s good citizens. It ain’t unconstitutional just because they happen to disagree with it.
It’s also hard to have a discussion with people when they are convinced that so and so would have done such and such a thing if elected to office, etc. Nothing Mitt said on the campaign trail backed up what your friends are saying. Unfortunately you can’t prove a negative, which is apparently what it would take to convince some folks that Mitt would not have passed an ObamaCare-esque bill as POTUS.
Nice analogies! I might even flesh out Sam’s 4th paragraph where he describes the other children “had to do it” (the homework) “for them.” The others were tricked into doing it for them (people using the emergency room for obviously non-emergency ailments) or doing all the work in a group project to ensure they get a good grade – the rest of the group get to be “free-riders.”
Excellent point! A similar point is found here, which you may also want to look at: http://whyromney.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=55
excerpt from above link:
Those who accuse Romney of hypocrisy for opposing federal mandates seem to selectively understand the difference between local and federal mandates. When it comes to the most central and local unit of society, the family, they want freedom to set mandates for their children respecting how they spend money, when they go to bed, what they eat, what they wear, what type of job they can have, where they live, who they may associate with, etc – but they wouldn’t want the federal government imposing those exact same mandates. Yet this is the same supposed double standard they accuse Romney of having, which makes them the hypocrites.
Government starts at the local level – the home. Society recognizes families as authoritative governing bodies with legitimate discretion for setting mandates. This is the recognized natural order of society under attack by progressives. Government extends outward from the home to the state and then to the federal level. The more localized a government is, the more its proper role relates to determining how people can run their lives. If parents want their school board to mandate that apples be provided in vending machines, would it be hypocrisy for them to resist the federal government imposing the SAME mandate on all schools across the nation? No.
Interesting that you call RomneyCare Masscare. You must be one of the Mitt minions from outside Mass. Mass-care is a two-decade-old (way before RomneyCare) organization and name for the movement to legislate single-payer health care in Massachusetts (see http://masscare.org/about-mass-care/).
I wouldn’t think Romney would want to be anymore associated with single payer health care than he is with Obamacare but with defenders like this, he’s on his way.