honest opinion rather than to just have an interesting debate here on the set, these things are problematic and probably reflect his view. but if you just read them literally, there is a way to explain them that s not an absolute smoking gun. it s not really again, it s not really what i think, but i don t want this to have a one-sided argument. john, you ve got to give your co-author credit for at least trying. all i would say to mark is to make those arguments, and there probably are dancing on the head kind of arguments, you d have to be a very adept and skilled candidate. in the big picture here is bad for romney, and he s not done a great job getting himself out of this box. he managed to for a long time when no one was challenging him in a forthright way. the combination of rick santorum being able to make this case against him aggressively and this op-ed now coming out is not going to stop him from getting the nomination probably, but it is going to make it very hard for h
consolidating around a big front-runner, and i think if he has a good night tonight, that will start to happen. you ll see more endorsements, more money, people pressing santorum and gingrich to get out of the race simultaneously. i don t know that they ll get out, but i think it s basically over tonight if he performs up to where he could be. health care is coming back to haunt romney again. he s coming under fire for a 2009 op-ed arguing that the massachusetts health care plan he enacted as governor could be used as a polgds fmodel for the. this wasn t the only time romney spoke in favor for an individual mandate. in a 2006 interview, romney was asked whether his health care plan should go national. the former governor responded saying in part, quote, i think what we ve crafted changes the national paradigm. it shows that you can insist on individual responsibility and market reforms to get everybody insured. personal responsibility and market reform get to the markets to work for
i mean, look. we thought we knew the basic setup, though. we knew what he had done in massachusetts. and so this is kind of, in the larger sense, a detail that is it s a detail of the bigger picture which is that this is the health care system he invented. this is the health care system he put in place. and he thought was dandy. he still thinks was dandy for massachusetts. but now says it s rotten for the rest of the country. okay. you. you know, that s a difficult argument to make, i think, but he s going to have to make it. it s a fair fight. i don t think at this point he can make it, and that is the biggest problem is that he hid behind states rights which a lot of conservatives would say yes, let the states figure out what is best for them. you have 50 legislative laboratories. but this usa today op-ed especially shows him giving the president advice to adopt his individual mandate nationally.
ways, these guys mechanically have disqualified themselves from defeating romney for their inability to challenge him. john, you made the same argument last hour. just not an obscure thing. this is an op-ed three years ago from usa today. the most idiotic drunk, unpaid intern with a lexus nexus account should have been able to find this. and the fact that apparently there were no drug idiotic interns available on any other campaigns makes you wonder, what were they doing? and it s not like the notion of romneycare was not seen as a vulnerability from the beginning. everybody talks about it all last year. it just seems like the incompetence level i actually think romney should win the nomination now by default on the basis this is being brought up so late because it shows that the rest of his rivals were completely incompetent. he s never had to run has he run an ad mark, correct me if i m wrong has romney had to run an ad defending himself?
on the far right side of the table. adorable. dan has been going on and on about iran, but we ve been debating mostly this morning mitt romney going out yesterday going oh, no, no, no, i was never for a national mandate, a federal mandate. well, what has struck me about this conversation and it feels as if it s almost democrats, somebody restigated this and got it back into the bloodstream but how is it he s gone through this whole primary without litigating health care? he has never had to do it. perry never did it to him. gingrich never did it to him. santorum only in the last 72 hours has been trying with the assist of when this 2009 op-ed was brought to their attention when you re thinking, hello? here in march. which to me ought to disqualify the santorum campaign right there. if you didn t have it if you weren t ready with your litigating this specific issue. how did they not have that? and nobody s so in many