What would Day One of a Romney presidency look like? In his first general election ad, Romney outlines the three main priorities he would address as soon as he took office: approving the Keystone XL pipeline, instituting tax cuts and reforms and replacing Obamacare:
Notice Romney emphasizes “replacing” Obamacare, as opposed to his dubious primary claim that he would issue state waivers on his first day in office. The difficulty now is figuring out what exactly to replace it with. The vague promise of “common sense health reform” works in TV ads, but he’s going to have to get specific soon, which raises several political problems for him. Because he’s the author of RomneyCare, his plan will have to meet a very, very high bar with distrustful conservatives. And as soon as he actually issues a specific proposal, he’ll also give Democrats a major opening to attack him.
The commercial itself, which is reportedly a $1.2 million buy in four swing states, shows Romney is trying to keep his own campaign largely positive, and leave the attacks to outside conservative groups and surrogates. But this particular ad also seems ripe for parody, and it wouldn’t be surprising if a Democratic group released a horror movie-style ad about Day One of the Romney presidency to counter it.
It’s also true that it’s going to be much easier for Romney to run a positive-style campaign than it will be for Obama. While Romney has the advantage of being able to make lofty promises and create an idealistic image of what his administration would look like, Obama has to deal with the reality of his first term, which failed to live up to his glowing vision from 2008.
1) "approving the Keystone XL pipeline" Great! n n2) "instituting tax cuts and reforms" Great! n n3) "replacing Obamacare" Ugh!! n nHere is the problem conservatives have with Romney. We always suspected that instead of simply REPEALING Obamacare, he wants to REPLACE it. We don't need the federal government to replace Obamacare. We need to put a nail through the bloodsucking heart of that economic vampire. But Romney wants to be a good manager of what is already in place instead of actually reducing the scope of the federal government.
No doubt the first two bullet points are awesome. The third one is a red herring and we don't need it.
A good quality national healthcare system needs to be introduced progressively over a period of a few years (4-8) with the possibility to supplement it with a (non-deductible) private insurance.
No it doesn't! n nRonald Reagan put it best — the fact that you can cross a state line to escape tyranny prevents it.
Scott, you are simply wrong. Mitt Romney has clearly stated his position on Obamacare. He wants to end it. Romney will sign an executive order within the first 24 hours of his administration that should effectively put his monstrosity out of its misery. Romney is not a Herbert Hoover managerial type of Republican!
No David. Mitt Romney is bright enough to know the difference between the word "replace" and the word "repeal." Words mean things. If Romney intended to drive a stake through this thing, he would be making promises to repeal, abolish, plow salt into its fertile fields, etc. No , we aren't hearing that…..
Mitt Romney versus Michelle Bachmann. n nBachmann said that her ideal would be to have had both branches of Congress already have passed the repeal of NoBama NoCare and to have someone standing there with it when the new president is sworn in. And it immediately is signed into law, it immediately and totally is repealed and it is GONE. GONE — and then if we want to start thinking health savings accounts and other various things, if we want to start thinking about opening up the federal employee's health plan to everyone, if we want to think of true catastrophic insurance (which is what "insurance" is supposed to be), those come in a s virgin bills on a clear landscape. n nRomney's approach appears to be "fix it, not end it" — and we heard that nearly 20 years ago regarding Affirmative Action and things are worse now than then. n nRomney's use of the word "replace" appears to mean that he will only accept a different version of Obamacare (perhaps Romneycare) as the price for eliminating the current version. That is the classic example of replacing a known evil with a perhaps worse unknown one…. n nImagine if instead of saying he would approve the Keystone Pipeline, he was to have said that he would "re-evaluate the issues relative to it" or "reconsider" the pipeline. No, he was explicit, it's being authorized if he is elected. Why not the same level of specifics here? n nThe wild card in all of this will be next month's SCOTUS ruling — and the cynical side of me is wondering if (a) Romney expects SCOTUS to strike it down, and (b) he use of the "replace" word means that (c) he intends to actually re-create Obamacare when in doing nothing there would be nothing. That is a far cry from repealing something that neither the majority of Congress nor the American people wanted in the first place. n nThis is an issue where Romney can't just say "trust me" because he has an extensive track history on the other side of the issue — Romneycare being the actual model for Obama care. No, this is where Romney has to make specific promises with his character and reputation behind them, specific and explicit enough that anything other than an outright repeal and/or him doing everything possible to preclude its implementation will be clearly seen as him breaking his word. n nKinda like George Bush Sr. and "read my lips, 'no new taxes'." Bush broke that promise, clearly, and paid the price. Romney needs to give the same level of commitment and face the same level of consequence for us to trust him on this….
The "repeal" vs. "replace" is a question that can be posed. Of far more importance is gauging Romney's commitment to energy development, since it's the only thing that can get the US and its allies going again. One cannot over-stress the importance of developing the stupendous amounts of available and affordable domestic energy in the form of coal, oil and gas. The economic upsurge such a program would bring would, actually, be a panacea to most problems we all face today.
No, no, no. You are not going to distract us from the real question — is he or is he not committed to repeal, destroy, shred, drive a stake through the heart of Obamacare or is he not? n nEven more than energy, this is the most important thing in our lifetimes because, damn it, we *can* walk if we have to…. And Romney is going to have to answer this or we are going to have to presume that there is no distinction between him and Obama, at which point, well, why are we bothering????