Mitt Romney is toast

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

According to a spokesman, "Mitt Romney is proud of what he accomplished for Massachusetts in getting everyone covered."

According to that spokesman, "Romneycare" isn't like the Affordable Care Act (i.e., "Obamacare," according to Republican propaganda) because it's a single-state system, not a national one, and because "[a] one-size-fits-all plan for the entire nation just doesn't work." States, he asserted, should have "the power to determine their own healthcare solutions."

There is much to recommend Romneycare, once the sort of thing Republicans supported, but the argument that states should all have their own individual systems is silly. Moreover, the two systems are "essentially the same," as Yglesias noted last year -- Romneycare even includes a dreaded individual mandate, now the main target of opponents of the Affordable Care Act -- and Romney has been all over the place distancing himself from the Affordable Care Act. He's obviously landed now on the federal/state distinction, but that won't get him anywhere in today's GOP. Indeed, Karl Rove said last month that Romney basically needs to admit that his heath-care reform in Massachusetts was wrong and that he should apologize for it. Apparently that's not about to happen, not with Romney adamantly defending the Obama-like system that bears his name.

Prediction: Mitt Romney will not be the Republican nominee for president in 2012. He's toast. And, try as he might to protest his sufficiently right-wing cred, he's just making it worse for himself. He did a very good thing in Massachusetts, something he should be very proud of. Don't expect Republicans, and particularly the base, to give him the benefit of anything. They'll destroy him, and that will be that.

(Yes, that's the easiest prediction I've made in a long time, maybe since I picked Christine O'Donnell to lose the Delaware Senate race in a landslide. I don't claim to be a crystal ball. Some things are just obvious.)