Democrats Just Took Out Mitt Romney

"No, no. I like mandates," said Mitt Romney.

Score one for Democrats, they just took out the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president.

Progressives and lighting-fast Internet media just cost Mitt Romney the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

Democratic Rapid Response (DNC), Talking Points Memo, and Daily Kos have revealed Mitt Romney's exercise in hypocrisy [see video below] devastating for this prospective presidential candidate in GOP-land that has made opposition to health care reform its number one directive for the next two years.



Analysis by Jed Lewison at Daily Kos:

Via Greg Sargent, the DNC has posted a highlight reel of Mitt Romney endorsing an individual responsibility mandate to purchase health care insurance.

The video shows Romney repeatedly endorsing a central plank of what his Republican presidential primary opponents will derisively call "ObamaCare." Even if Democrats never run this video again, his primary opponents will run it -- and in the process, destroy Romney's presidential aspirations.

Between the DNC video and the above quote, it's clear that until 2010, Mitt Romney agreed with President Obama on a key pillar of health care reform. Romney now claims he never supported that long-held position, but the video doesn't lie.

The clips in this video will become Romney's own Waterloo. In today's Republican Party, absolute opposition to President Obama is a core litmus test -- and on the issue that has most enraged the GOP base, Romney was utterly failed that test.

It doesn't matter that President Obama's plan was embracing an idea that Romney had already implemented in Massachusetts. It doesn't matter that President Obama didn't support the idea during the 2008 campaign. The only thing that matters is that Romney publicly stated support for a key part of President Obama's health care reform plan, and that simple fact will wreck his presidential bid.

He's become a victim of his own party's extreme radicalization and refusal to compromise on anything.

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Postscript:Although it's not on this video, here's another quote that Romney's primary opponents should obtain on video (BarbinMD found it in Nexis, from Neil Cavuto's show on April 12, 2006):

It's a Republican way of reforming the market, because, let me tell you, having 30 million people in this country without health insurance and having those people show up when they get sick, and expect someone else to pay, that's a Democratic approach. That's the wrong way.

The Republican approach is to say, you know what? Everybody should have insurance. They should pay what they can afford to pay. If they need help, we will be there to help them, but no more free ride.