Now that a proposed government regulation would require most employer-provided health insurance to cover birth control, the Republican party has strongly rallied around the idea that what insurance covers is a part of “religious freedom” that must be protected from government attack. This new rule so strongly bothered Mitt Romney, the front runner for the [...]

The Republican Party has apparently decided that they really want to have a big public fight with President Obama over whether or not employers with connections to religious institutions should be required to provide birth control as part of their employees’ health insurance. The GOP is acting like they believe the issue is a political [...]

Many of the design principles for the insurance market exchanges in the Affordable Care Act were based on unproven, discredited, and frankly absurd conservative notions about the economagic of free markets.  But too many liberals refused to acknowledge this. During the height of the debate on the ACA, the inherently conservative and flawed nature of [...]

Ron Paul is such a dilemma for many liberals because he doesn’t fit nicely into the current narrow political continuum. It is easy for liberals to ignore how bad Democrats are on many issues because Republicans are almost always equally as bad on those issues or marginally worse.  This makes comparing a Democrat to a [...]

During the health care debate Democrats worked very hard to promote the myth that reconciliation is an incredibly limited legislative procedure. They did this to create an excuse so they could tell their base the rules “forced” them to go with a corporatist health care reform package. In reality Democrats didn’t pass a more progressive [...]

Seriously, David Axelrod? You ride to the White House on a campaign to rise above intolerance, negativity and partisanship, and without a moment of self-reflection, announce a campaign based on … intolerance, negativity and partisanship? Rather than fix the economy by having the political courage to do what you said needed to be done when you were stoking people’s hope in 2008, you now plan to impose the austerity measures they overwhelmingly oppose and raise hundreds of millions of dollars to tell people your “weird” opponent in his “skinny jeans” is not “principled and consistent”? You want to fan the same bigotry and cultural biases the President promised to rise above, hoping win reelection by virtue suppressing turnout?

The Boston Globe the have an interesting piece about how Massachusetts’ health care reform law came into being and the role Mitt Romney played in assure it’s passage. It is well worth a read. The article shows what a prominent role Romney played personally in making sure a individual mandate was part of the final legislation and why it would be impossible for him now to fully renounce the one in the Massachusetts’ law he signed. From the Boston Globe:

Romney’s grasp of the subject was “unbelievably impressive,’’ he said, and the governor warmed to the game-changing potential of the individual mandate. Romney’s political advisers, however, “were not that keen on it,’’ [Jonathan] Gruber said.

To them, the political hazards spoke louder than the policy-making opportunity.

The key players in the Massachusetts debate know what a critical champion Romney was of the individual mandate; so a total flip flop on the issue would be too deeply cynical as to be politically unfeasible

The article again made it clear how many of the most important components of the Massachusetts law, which also eventually made it into the Affordable Care Act, were only a few years ago seen as deep conservative policies advanced by right wing think tanks.

In an op-ed for the New Hampshire Union Leader, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney attacked President Obama for a “peacetime spending binge,” as pointed out by Greg Sargent. From the Op-ed: Barack Obama is facing a financial emergency on a grander scale. Yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime [...]

One of my strongest hopes is that everyone in the media, especially on the left, can simply stop pretending the new health reform law is some great progressive victory. It is not. It is a conservative, pro-corporate piece of legislation. From the CBS News: Obama: Well, partly because I couldn’t get the kind of cooperation [...]

Now that President Obama and the rest of the Democratic leadership no longer need to hide from their base that the new health care law is in fact a pro-health insurance industry Republican plan as part of a push to enact the law, they are openly admitting the plan’s true origins. This bill is a [...]