While Tim Pawlenty’s criticism of Mitt Romney’s health-care program (he called it ‘Obamneycare’ to emphasize the similarities between Romney’s program and Obama’s) is his most memorable, he also emphasized two additional criticisms of Romney in the last debate he participated in, the Fox News debate held August 11 in Iowa:
Yeah, Mitt, look, Obamacare was patterned after Mitt’s plan in Massachusetts. And for Mitt or anyone else to say that there aren’t substantial similarities or they’re not essentially the same plan, it just isn’t credible. So that’s why I called it Obamneycare, and I think that’s a fair label, and I’m happy to call it that again tonight. But that’s not the only similarity between Governor Romney’s record and President Obama’s record.
Again, if we’re going to take him on, we have to contrast with him on other important issues. For example, in spending, I’ve got the best spending record. I took Minnesota’s historic spending from highs to lows. Mitt ran up spending in his watch as governor 40-plus percent over his n four years. That’s not going to contrast very well with the president.
In the area of judicial selections, the Boston Globe said that two out of three or so of Mitt’s judicial selections, judge selections were either pro-choice, Democrat, or liberal. I appointed conservatives, strict constructionists to my supreme court. So we’re going to have to take it to Barack Obama, and we’re going to have to show contrast, not similarities.