Romney Running On and Against ObamaCare

     It reminds you of the old fairy tale where it blows some superstitious old man's mind to see a woman first blow on her hands to warm them up and then blow on her soup to cool it down.

     He ran off screaming, "Hot and Cold from one mouth! It must be evil spirits."

     Now we have Romney giving us a real case of two contradictionary things coming from one mouth. Seriously, does the expression, "talking out of both sides of your mouth" fit anyone better than the Governor?

      I never know if his ability to live with the cognitive dissonance that is his own campaign is actually some kind of great talent, that is worthy of respect if not admiration. Talk about hot and cold from one mouth! How about his position on healthcare? His message that is supposedly more Centrist is to both mention what he did in Massachusetts while vowing to eliminate ObamaCare although the two laws are one and the same.

     On Wednesday night, as ThinkProgress reports, Romney did everything he could to give the false impression that his law was in some important sense different than Obama's-though Jonathon Gruber, the architect for Romney and then Obama says there's no difference.

     
     "Here are six instances when Romney embraced provisions of the law he also promised to repeal:

– First of all, I like the way we did [health reform] in Massachusetts.
– Let — well, actually — actually it’s — it’s — it’s a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.
– Number two, young people are able to stay on their family plan. That’s already offered in the private marketplace; you don’t have — have the government mandate that for that to occur.
– And what we did in Massachusetts is a model for the nation, state by state.
– The federal government taking over health care for the entire nation and whisking aside the 10th Amendment, which gives states the rights for these kinds of things, is not the course for America to have a stronger, more vibrant economy.
– We’ll put in place the kind of principles that I put in place in my own state and allow each state to craft their own programs to get people insured.

     "Notice that Romney suggests that his plan will protect consumers by imposing government mandates, and then he proceeds to slam Obamacare for imposing government mandates."

     "This is not the first time that Romney has held up the consumer protections in his reform law as a potential archetype for the nation, and while he has a lengthy history of heralding Obamacare’s individual mandate as a creative and responsible mechanism for reforming insurance without skyrocketing consumers’ premiums, he has sprinted away from it during his campaign for the presidency."

     http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/10/04/958051/romney-misrepresents-health-plan/

     It's like a Saturday Night spoof of Romney back in April: "Hi, I'm Mitt Romney, and I'm running on everything!"

     On every issue he's on both sides-both for it and against it. For me, in what was a truly gruesome display of obfuscation and distortion, that may have been the most egregious part of his performance of all. While as I've mentioned in previous posts I don't think Obama did as bad in that debate as many think-in the short run Romney may benefit but in the longer run he tied his own noose-it is true that the President should have confronted Romney at least a little bit even if he was trying to remain Presidential.

     There were a few things Romney said that had to be pushed back on. One, of course, was the false claim that Obama's policies had crushed the middle class. Another was the fake $716 billion dollar cut to Medicare.

      But what rankled me most of all was Romney getting away with both taking credit for ObamaCare while running against it while fallaciously trying to hint that there was a difference between the two.