Amazing — Mitt Romney doubles down on his own personal albatross:
If I were president, on Day One I would issue an executive order paving the way for Obamacare waivers to all 50 states.
This is precisely, exactly what not to do on Day One, governor. On Day One, you make the first order of business signing the total repeal of Obamacare after it passes both houses of the new congress.
The executive order would direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services and all relevant federal officials to return the maximum possible authority to the states to innovate and design health-care solutions that work best for them.
Obamacare wasn’t about health care, governor; it was about power. It was a solution to an essentially non-existent “crisis” that could have been fixed with less regulation and more competition, not more government.
As I have stated time and again, a one-size-fits-all national plan that raises taxes is simply not the answer. Under our federalist system, the states are “laboratories of democracy.” They should be free to experiment. By the way, what works in one state may not be the answer for another.
Where has Mitt been since 2008, in the Social Security lockbox? The battle over Obamacare had nothing to do with states being laboratories of democracy. And as for that “what works in one state” bit, I wonder which state he’s talking about.
Of course, the ultimate goal is to repeal Obamacare and replace it with free-market reforms that promote competition and lower health-care costs. But since an outright repeal would take time, an executive order is the first step in returning power to the states.
Of course.
The governor’s 50-state nullification strategy would be a surrender, not a victory, since it leaves the philosophical premise of Obamacare intact. But it seems to me that what the American people — those living between New Jersey and Nevada, anyway — voted for last November was not finagling around the edges but a head-on assault against the excesses of the Pelosi-Reid Congress and Obamaism.
Obamacare was and remains the first big, ugly, visible manifestation of domestic “fundamental change,” and it hasn’t gotten any prettier in the year it’s been stalking the countryside. That the governor hasn’t figured that out yet tells me he won’t be getting a promotion to president in 2012.