And he's not going to repeal obamacare.

If he manages to win, he will change his tune to "I don't know if we need to overturn the whole thing, maybe just tweak it a little bit to make it better."

Just like many people here, romney likes government control as long as he's in control of the government.

Romney is toxic, simply toxic, to small government and the idea of rolling back Leviathan. The crony capitalists he chums with must be drooling slobber all over themselves at the idea of him getting elected.

It's not a flip-flop. There are simply better options this election cycle. We should work to pick the best CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLED candidate.

By that strange logic, anyone who supported Dole in '96 or GHWB in '92 shouldn't be switching horses.

It is possible to think Romney was the best choice in 2008 but think that there are better choices this cycle. Or to just think you were wrong in 2008.

I never supported Mitt in '08 and consider myself a conservative.

Would Mitt been better in '08 then McCain? Absolutely. But this time we have better options. I am not sure who I currently support.

I am undecided since my candidate announced that she was not going to run this year.

So, the way I look at it, Romneycare was a mistake of monumental porportions, and until he does, he will not get the conservative base that he needs to win.

BTW, in '08, Fred! was a much better candidate than anyone else running, and would have won with or without Palin.

Doubling down on stupid. The federalism argument is very disingenuous. Not every law is good or defensible just because it's enacted at a state level. Experimenting with legalized arson would not be a good idea for the governor of any one state to suggest or implement, the 10th amendment notwithstanding. Romney, correctly, didn't think Perry's Gardasil initiative was rational or defensible simply because it was solely a Texas program.

Romney wants to have it both ways here, and he continually tries to appeal to detractors of his program with the backward logic that even those of us who think Romneycare has failed are in debt to him for having the courage to experiment in MA and thus limit the damage to one state (paraphrasing, but he uses this reasoning in the above passage and at other times). That is an alarming recommendation - that he supposedly cares so much for states rights that he was willing to use the people of the state he was elected to lead as guinea pigs to test the national suitablity of socialized medicine. It's especially alarming when one realizes that as president we would ALL be living in his states, and thus he'd be free to experiment with the USA as a whole.

"Isn't that up to the people of Massachusetts to decide if their law is good, or not? "

Are you trying to claim that unless someone lives in MA, they have no right to an opinion on RomneyCare?

"Isn't that up to the people of Massachusetts to decide if their law is good, or not?"

For their purposes, yes. But people outside MA aren't obligated to just defer to Massachusettans' opinions, re Romney or health care or anything.

When I said Romney wants to have it both ways, I was referring to his using Romneycare positively with its supporters, and then even using it inversely with its detractors, as I described. That's a strange tactic that just can't seem to accept that you can't please all the people all the time.

Yes, I fully understand that the president is not the czar of the 50 states. If only we could be sure every president and presidential aspirant realized that. Mitt may not be an egomaniac like BHO but it's a warning sign that his instinct in MA was to rush in and do something, anything. Hardly the instinct of a Buckleyesque conservative. It seems more like the typical politician's move to rush to build something big and expensive just so he can slap his name on it. Would he want to make his permanent mark on the presidency the expensive same way (via health or something else)? I can't say no, based on his record.

The "primacy of federalism" means nothing if all that federalism is used for is to advance bad ideas. Voters are allowed to judge each program on its merits. And yes, voters, even outside Massachusetts, are allowed to judge each candidate on his. If preferring other candidates to Mitt is nefariously "advancing my own agenda" (i.e., being pro-Perry) then I plead guilty.

"His argument is that Obamacare is a bad idea and that Romneycare was a bad idea. "

You, and some others, are reacting as if Romney was the King of Massachusetts for four years. He wasn't. Instead, he was one branch of government that happened to be aligned against two other branches of government that were (and are) OVERWHELMINGLY liberal.

The voters of MA made up their collective minds about wanting to do something, anything about the uninsured in their state. Loud and powerful forces in the legislature wanted to adopt a universal system that almost entirely abandoned the private market. Romney provided a free market alternative that went a LONG WAY to maintaining and protecting private insurers. He should be applauded for that, not ridiculed.

Absent Romneycare, the legislature that enjoyed majorities that could have and would have easily overridden any Romney veto, would have come up with something that would have been far less palatable than Romneycare is.

Some conservatives live a a fantasy world that more closely resembles conservative Narnia. They think that if we just elect the "right" kind of Republican, liberalism will just fade away. Far from it. Reagan raised taxes three times as Governor of California, but was still nominated as a conservative icon. Reagan went on to raise taxes three more times as president, one of which was (at the time) the largest tax increase in American history. That's what leaders have to do sometimes. They have to compromise. Romney made the best free-market deal he could make, and without that deal, things would have been much worse for the principles of the free market in MA.