Rick Santorum explains ObamaCare’s importance to the GOP’s strategy in the general election and why Romney can’t effectively make the case for repeal. Santorum pointed out that RomneyCare provided the blueprint for Obama’s plan and addeed:
Folks, we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom.
Giving the GOP presidential nomination to Romney will indeed amount to surrendering the high ground on ObamaCare and the rote and unconvincing excuses offered by the former Massachusetts governor are never going to cut it against Obama:
Yep. You read that right. Norm Coleman, an important advisor to Mitt Romney, said the following on a talking heads gasfest a couple of days ago:
You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president … You can’t whole-cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what’s been done.
This not only conflicts with what Romney has been saying in the debates, it suggests that he and his advisors are out of touch with the GOP base.
Repeal is a major issue with GOP voters. Yet Romney provided the blueprint for ObamaCare and apparently isn’t truly committed to repeal.
Just another brick in the wall. If the GOP is dumb enough to give the presidential nomination to Mitt Romney, Obama will beat him like a drum.
Obamacare’s advocates claim the law is unpopular because the public just doesn’t get it. So, why didn’t Obama use his SOTU address to help us understand? Because he and his minions know that, in reality, the problem is that Americans understand it all too well. Here’s a clip of HHS Secretary Sebelius being asked why there was virtually no mention of health care in Obama’s speech. Her non-answer says a lot:
Santorum used ObamaCare to define himself as the only genuine conservative in the race by describing the histories of Romney and Gingrich as fair weather conservatives who caved on health reform:
The biggest issue we have to deal with in this election that’s crushing the economy, will crush it even further and crush freedom … that’s ObamaCare. Governor Romney’s plan in Massachusetts was the basis for ObamaCare. Speaker Gingrich, for twenty years, supported a federal individual mandate.
My column in today’s American Spectator discusses the shallowness that pervades contemporary journalism and how Newt Gingrich has exploited it to keep his campaign alive:
Newt realized early on that much of the voter indignation that has manifested itself in the Tea Party movement is driven by media complicity with Obama in his ongoing effort to ignore the will of the people and transform the U.S. into a European-style social democracy.
This became blindingly obvious when Newt’s reprimand of CNN’s John King drew two standing ovations from a debate audience. He has received similar responses in previous debates:
One moderator of a CNBC debate, who gave each candidate thirty seconds to propose an alternative to ObamaCare, was clearly shocked and angered when Gingrich accurately labeled it an “absurd question.” She had no idea that she had said something stupid.
This is typical of MSM “reporters” and it’s the primary cause of what often appears to be mere bias. Most of these people simply don’t understand the issues well enough to ask intelligent questions.
Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute and Dr. Hal Scherz of Docs4PatientCare explain how states can stymie ObamaCare by refusing to lay the foundation upon which it was designed to be constructed:
State leaders can force Congress to revisit the disastrous law—-and replace it with reforms that will actually improve the accessibility and affordability of health insurance.
But how can the states pull this off?
If a state refuses to set up its own exchange, Obamacare allows the federal government to come into the state and set one up.
But here’s the rub. The text of the law stipulates that only state-based exchanges—-not federally run ones—-may distribute credits and subsidies.
Without the federal cash, consumers won’t patronize the government-run exchanges—-particularly with all the cost-inflating mandates they impose on insurers who wish to participate.
There is a kind of poetic justice to this approach. ObamaCare was set up so that federal bureaucracies could shove it down the throats of states. This strategy allows state leaders and their own bureaucracies to stop PPACA.
It is certainly true that Newt has been on the wrong side of the health reform debate on more than one occasion, but his answer to a question about how ObamaCare can be repealed is excellent. And he also manages to get in this zinger about Obama’s pathetic jobs record:
Why is President Obama for young people being allowed to stay on their parents insurance until 26? Because he can’t get any jobs for them to go out and buy their own insurance.
It has been obvious since October that the Gingrich strategy for capturing the Republican nomination for President includes running against the “news” media as well as President Obama.
This confrontation between Newt Gingrich and CNN’s John King during the first moments of the GOP debate vindicates the shrewdness of that plan. The crowd loved it an King had it coming. Among other things Newt said:
I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office … I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.
If you are one of those Republicans who believe Romney is the “most electable” GOP candidate, I recommend this. It sums up in just a few moments why Romney has no prayer of beating Obama in the general election.
His flip-flops on health reform, the Second Amendment and abortion are well-documented and fatal. And this doesn’t even go into the corporate raider stuff or Romney’s religion, which they will (count on it) use against him: