July 02, 2012 11:13 PM UTC

Romney Struggles Badly With Obamacare Ruling Spin

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

Michael Memoli of the Los Angeles Times reports today on the contortions facing GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney following last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform law–which, in case you’ve been living under a rock through the GOP primary, is very similar to what then-Gov. Romney signed into law in the state of Massachusetts. This is shaping up to be a major problem, with the Romney campaign’s strained differentiations–or lack thereof–not even close to helpful:

Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior Mitt Romney campaign advisor, said in an interview Monday that Romney agrees with Obama that the mechanism to enforce the so-called mandate that Americans have insurance – a provision modeled after the Massachusetts law Romney had signed as governor – was a penalty and not a tax, a statement that runs counter to what the rest of the GOP has argued in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling last Thursday.

“He disagreed with the ruling. He disagreed with the findings of the ruling. He disagreed with the logic that supported those findings. He said that he agreed with the dissent, which was written by Justice Scalia, and the dissent clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax,” Fehrnstrom said on MSNBC’s”Daily Rundown.”

…[T]o the main Republican argument on whether the mandate was enforced by a tax or a penalty, Fehrnstrom sided with the president and against the GOP. [Pols emphasis]

“The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty, and he disagrees with the court’s ruling that the mandate was a tax,” Fehrnstrom said.

The problem here is not over the question of whether or not Obamacare’s individual mandate, like “Romneycare’s,” amounts to a “tax” or a “penalty.” The Romney’s campaign’s disagreement over this technical point with the rest of the Republican Party is most notable because it highlights the basic commonality between Obamacare and Romneycare. Romney’s mandate, “what we put in place in Massachusetts,” is so similar to what Obama signed into law that Romney’s campaign is obligated to correct fellow Republicans in its own defense.

Now, there’s a chance that Romney’s campaign and every other Republican 2012 candidate will just agree to disagree, and let the cognitive dissonance play itself out–perhaps counting on a majority of voters never understanding these nuances. But every voter who does figure out that Republicans are essentially running against both Romney and Obama on health care reform is going to be left feeling like something fundamentally dishonest is taking place.

And that’s exactly what Romney’s GOP primary opponents warned would happen:

If you were awake in March and April, you probably remember a line that the increasingly desperate Rick Santorum kept using against Mitt Romney. “Mitt Romney is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama on the issue of health care!” he’d say…

Santorum was right.