The Economist explains how conservatives do this by supporting Mitt Romney in healthcare but railing against President Obama’s health care law which is practically identical HERE: Mr Romney’s very presence on the national scene reminds conservative editorialists of the fact that Obamacare, a policy they have demonised as incipient tyrannical socialism, differs little from policies many prominent conservatives once endorsed. The cognitive dissonance is too great to bear. So conservative opinionmakers are left with a choice: admit that individual mandates and many other features of Obamacare figured prominently in conservative health-care reform proposals just a few years ago, or throw Mr Romney to the wolves for the crime of leadership in health-care reform. By juxtaposing National Review’s editorial on Mr Romney’s recent health-care speech with its 2007 editorial endorsing him for the GOP nomination for president, Matthew Yglesias perfectly captures how the right is making Mr Romney pay for its own en masse opportunistic waffling. Here’s National Review on Friday: [W]hen conservatives argue that Obamacare is a threat to the economy, to the quality of health care, and to the proper balance between government and citizenry, we do not mean that it should be implemented at the state level. We mean that it should not be implemented at all. And Romney’s health-care federalism is wobbly. The federal government picked up a fifth of the cost of his health-care plan. His justification for the individual mandate also lends itself naturally toward federal imposition of a mandate. He says that the state had to make insurance compulsory to prevent cost shifting, because federal law requires hospitals to treat all comers, insured or not. But if federal law is the source of a national problem, it makes no sense to advocate a state-by-state solution.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 05:48:25 +0000