Thursday, September 22, 2011

Perry flubs a shot at Romney

In tonight's GOP presidential debate, Romney did a great job nailing Perry to the cross of his ridiculous pronouncements against Social Security -- it's unconstitutional, it's a ponzi scheme etc.-- and his recent attempts to unsay them. Unfortunately, when Perry had a chance to turn the tables, and highlight the disconnect between Romney's defense of Romneycare and denunciations of Obamacare, he flubbed it.

I forget the question, but Romney managed to say  in one extended breath that Romneycare was great because "nothing's changed" for the 92% of Massachusetts people who already had coverage, while the uninsured were given a choice among "market-based private insurance" plans. Of course, the same is true of Obamacare. He then cast Obamacare as an abomination because it "puts someone between you and your doctor." In a clearing stands a boxer...lie lie lie, as Romney did every time he said anything about Obama.  While the ACA empowers an independent board to cut Medicare costs on a national level, it puts absolutely no one between doctor and patient in any plan.  In any case, Perry's opportunity was to point out that everything Romney said in praise of the Massachusetts plan was true of the ACA -- and then rip both.

Instead, Perry opted to recite a litany of Romney flip-flops. Except he couldn't quite remember them or articulate them -- you could see him frantically riffling the cue card deck in his mind. He did manage to spit out someting about abortion and I'm sorry, I can't remember what else, with mangled syntax, but the Obamneycare moment was lost.

What is it about the GOP candidates that makes them unable to look at Romney (which Perry had trouble doing in all their confrontations, btw) and say, there's not a dime's worth of difference between Romneycare and Obamacare, and here's how they're similar?  Maybe they're afraid that if they detail the provisions, the ACA won't sound so bad?

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