Once again, the attacks on Romneycare fall harmless

In this debate, finally, Romney's rivals tried to sustain a collective attack on the health insurance program he designed and implemented in Massachusetts. Someone (Gingrich, I think) charged that it jacked up healthcare costs in Massachusetts, which have indeed risen at faster than the national rate (as they did before the plan was implemented). Someone else (Perry, I think) charged that Romney had held the plan up as a model for the whole country -- rehashing an excision between editions of Romney's campaign book -- and others piled on.

Once again, however, what nobody managed to do was to spell out the extent to which the Affordable Care Act was modeled on Romneycare-- that the national plan borrows the subsidized exchanges composed of private health plans conforming to minimum coverage rules, with the whole structure made economically viable by the individual mandate and the employer mandate.  Romney was again allowed to emphasize that he created a free market solution for the uninsured, though he didn't get around this time to the lie that the ACA is by contrast "government controlled," as if it weren't structured the same way. Gingrich even threw Romney a bone, asserting that Romneycare "wasn't as bad" as Obamacare without detailing how they were different, or similar.

"Michele doesn't comment on any of it"

In the last GOP debate, some participants say that the audience boos for a gay soldier asking a question about Don't Ask Don't Tell couldn't be heard clearly on the stage. Others admit otherwise. After the fact, ABC asked all the candidates for comment. Michele Bachmann's response leaps out:

Rep. Michele Bachmann’s spokeswoman Alice Stewart said in an email to ABC News, “There was booing and cheering throughout the debate – Michele didn’t comment on any of it.”

Let's imagine equivalent responses in other situations that test a public figure's moral mettle.

Hillary Rodham Pawlenty

Jonathan Chait has been arguing that Michele Bachmann is positioned something like Obama in 2007: she does best among those voters "most attuned to the campaign."

If Bachmann is Obama, Tim Pawlenty seems to be lining up for the role of Hillary Clinton:

The real Ezekiel Emanuel, revisited

Thanks to Ezra Klein for bringing into the current debate about euthanasia and assisted suicide Ezekiel Emanuel's humane argument against legalizing those practices, expressed in a 1997 Atlantic article.  Emanuel's chief concern was that once assisted suicide and euthanasia become common and accepted, subtle (or not-so-subtle) pressure would be exerted on some very sick patients to end their lives to ease the burden on their caregivers and loved ones:

Broad legalization of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia would have the paradoxical effect of making patients seem to be responsible for their own suffering. Rather than being seen primarily as the victims of pain and suffering caused by disease, patients would be seen as having the power to end their suffering by agreeing to an injection or taking some pills; refusing would mean that living through the pain was the patient's decision, the patient's responsibility. Placing the blame on the patient would reduce the motivation of caregivers to provide the extra care that might be required, and would ease guilt if the care fell short. Such an easy, thoughtless shift of responsibility is probably what makes most hospice workers so deeply opposed to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.

That pressure, Emanuel warned, could also be financial, particularly in the United States:

Authenticiness

What quality would you ascribe to a public official who is willing to toss out any lie or unfounded accusation to whip the extreme fringe of her party into a frenzy?  One political scientist, perhaps a little too immersed in the political culture he studies, has an answer (my emphasis):

“Michele Bachmann does not have a strong record as a legislative strategist, and that’s never been her forte,” said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor. “She says things that are kind of off the wall, but these are often calculated statements on her part, to register with conservative, grass-roots people, and that’s very hard for folks who are not grass-roots conservatives to understand,” he said. “Some of the things she says are zany and embarrassing to other Republicans, but that’s part of what has given her this authenticity.”

"Calculated statements" -- like accusing your political opponents of "un-American values" or conjuring "death panels" out of thin air or retailing invented cost estimates for presidential travel -- confer "authenticity."  I'm afraid the good professor has caught the zeitgeist.