Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The GOP really didn't have a "Plan B" if the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. They were cocksure the fix was in.
But Chief Justice John Roberts provided them one: his opinion called "Obamacare" a "tax."
Well, there's nothing that excites a Tea-Publican like taxes. Opposing any and all taxes is their first commandment from the only lord and master they worship, Grover Norquist.
It didn't take long before the mighty Wurlitzer of the right-wing noise machine had Tea-Publicans all singing from their favorite hymnal: "Taxes! Taxes! Taxes!" Even Willard "Mittens" Romney delivered one of his patented lie-a-sentence (sometimes two!) statements decrying "Obamacare" as a tax increase.
Mittens shouldn't be throwing stones at glass houses. ObamaCare is modeled on RomneyCare, and RomneyCare was a tax as well. Mittens said so.
Greg Sargent writes Flashback: Romney admitted his mandate was a tax:
ABC News’s Michael Falcone unearths video of Mitt Romney admitting, in a 2008 presidential debate, that the individual mandate he passed as Governor of Massachusetts was a tax:
CHARLIE GIBSON: Governor, [inaudible] you imposed tax penalties in Massachusetts [inaudible].
ROMNEY: Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don’t be free-riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else...
The central argument that Republicans have been making in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling — which upheld the indivual mandate as a tax — is that it proves Obama foisted a massive tax hike on the nation. Yet Romney admitted that his own mandate was a tax, too.
* * *
Mitt Romney, in a 2009 USA Today Op ed:
Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.
Rick "man on dog" Santorum told voters in Wisconsin, "Pick any other Republican in the country. [Romney] is the worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama."
Yesterday's developments prove that Santorum was right. So let's just call it "ObamneyCare" from now on. Obama should hold Mittens close in a clench -- "It's your plan, buddy! When you attack me you attack yourself." Turn Romney's "I'm rubber, you're glue" strategy against him.
UPDATE: I have used this term "ObamneyCare" previously, many months ago in fact. So I am pleased to see that Ed Kilgore at the Political Animal blog is also using this term. The ObamneyCare Tax Increase. "[N]ow that Republicans are emphasizing that the individual mandate itself is not only a “tax,” but a monstrous, economy-and-liberty-destroying tax, it’s kind of hard to keep that talking point from backfiring on Romney."
UPDATE: Thats it! I tried to remember who was first to coin the term "ObamneyCare" and I could not recall that it was Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty "of nuthin'," now a Romney surrogate. Another Romney surrogate, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, had a brain fart during a presser on Friday and also called it "ObamneyCare." Check it out in this segment of the Rachel Maddow Show (around the 7:50 mark). When your own campaign surrogate invented "ObamneyCare," you know that you are in trouble.
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