Sunday, March 25, 2012

Sometimes The Best Defense Is To Punt

by JASmius

With the Supreme Court set to hear arguments in the multi-state lawsuit against ObamaCare this week, we're being given back something that has been sorely lacking for a very long time in the ongoing, interminable Republican nominating process as it relates to presumptive nominee Mitt Romney's perceived biggest weakness: RomneyCare.

That something is context and perspective. White House flunky David Plouffe was kind enough to provide both this morning:

White House senior adviser David Plouffe on Sunday labeled Mitt Romney the "godfather" of President Barack Obama's healthcare law.

Plouffe, running interference for Obamacare with appearances on four talk shows on the eve of Supreme Court arguments on the law, said the administration is "confident in the constitutionality" of President Obama's signature legislation.

"By the way, Mitt Romney's the godfather of our healthcare plan. If he's president, remarkably, he's running away from that past. And he's going to say he's going to try and throw all this away," Plouffe declared on NBC[CCP]'s Meet the Press.

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I find that fascinating. ObamaCare's second anniversary passed last week with not so much as a peep out of the Obama palace guard or an amen chorus from the Obamedia. The misbegotten legislative shitheap is more unpopular now than when it was shoved down our throats two years ago. The recent uproar over the regs forcing religious institutions to pay for aborificients and contraceptives has only fueled public anger and resentment. The Li'l President knows he can't run on it, or any other aspect of his miserable record. An unending torrent of lies and smears is his only avenue to re-election, in the hopes that he can somehow fool enough low-information voters on the one hand and so disgust and otherwise turn off the remainder that ACORN can defraud him the rest of the way to some sort of narrow, rip-off victory.

So that poses the question: Why is Plouffe bringing up O-Care in order to attack Romney for signing its state-level prototype? It seems a self-defeating general election strategy, since whatever damage it would do to Romney would be more than offset by reminding voters of how The One and his congressional accomplices took that Massachusetts blueprint and forced it on the entire country. Indeed, that would give Mitt the opening he would need to make his pitch about federalism and the states being laboratories for such things that are wrong to try and jam down from the federal level. It would even give him the opening to say what he has not heretofore admitted: That RomneyCare was a mistake, and ObamaCare is the proof.

The only other gambit I can think of is that Plouffe is trying to throw more fuel on the flames of the GOP civil war to try and keep Santorum and Gingrich hanging around in order to further wear down Romney before he can get to the general campaign. But even this seems fraught with boomerang potential. Mr. Newt and Cap'n Sweatervest hardly need any goading to continue their fratricidal anti-Mitt vendetta. Seeing Team Messiah openly rooting them on might be the one thing to make them stop, think, and realize what they're doing to the party and our nominee's chances in November.

As the saying goes, when your enemy is self-destructing, get out of his way. This would be far from the first time that the Obamunists couldn't leave well enough alone, to their own well-deserved detriment.

[cross-posted @ Hard Starboard]

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