The Democratic National Committee is hammering former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), with a new Web video calling him “another health care hypocrite” for opposing President Obama’s new health care law — after he himself passed a similar individual-mandate law in Massachusetts, and continued to advocate for the idea during his 2008 presidential campaign.
The Web video uses a clip of Romney during a Republican presidential primary debate:
MODERATOR: “You seem to have backed away from mandates on a national basis.”
ROMNEY: “No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.”
Romney also remarked to Fred Thompson, “Let me tell what kind of mandates I like, Fred.” To which Thompson replied: “The ones you come up with.”
Romney then discussed how the individual mandate is based on the conservative idea of personal responsibility, rather than allowing people to free-ride off the rest of the public when they get sick and don’t have insurance they could have afforded in advance.
Romney has lately been claiming that there is a difference between state-level action and a federal approach. But this video seems to show him expressly advocating for mandates at the national level.
(Via Greg Sargent.)
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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