Tuesday is a day that Mitt Romney, former Republican governor of Massachusetts should relish. It’s the fifth anniversary of the day that Romney signed a near-universal health care coverage bill into law after successfully navigating the partisan waters of a blue state and coming out with legislation supported by Democrats.
But it’s a day that Mitt Romney, undeclared presidential candidate, seems less than eager to call attention to. Democrats, on the other hand, are more than happy to do it for him.
On Tuesday, Democrats in New Hampshire and Massachusetts will gather to fete the anniversary by publicly thanking Romney for putting his signature on the Bay State law. Both states will serve health care law “birthday cakes” baked in Romney’s honor.
Here’s why, from an email New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley sent out Monday morning:
Five years ago, Mitt Romney laid the foundation for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Without Romney, it’s hard to see how President Obama would have been able to provide quality, affordable health care for every American.
The plan here is not difficult to detect. The Republicans had a field day hitting President Obama and the Democrats on the one-year anniversary of the national health care reform law Obama signed in 2010 and has said was partially based on the plan Romney championed in 2006. The health care thing — or maybe the socialist health care thing if you’re a tea party Republican voter — is seen as a giant Romney liability in the 2012 presidential nomination fight. So Democrats decided to give Romney what the Republicans tried to give Obama last month: an uncomfortable reminder of a giant legislative victory now seen as potential political problem.
Not surprisingly, Team Romney is less than interested in engaging on the anniversary.
“Somehow I’m not surprised that Democrats are sitting around eating cake while 14 million unemployed Americans are struggling to put food on their table,” Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN.
Romney’s been telling his supporters his health care reform legacy won’t be a problem. Why? Because he says it was never intended for the whole nation, and he definitely never would have tried to do what Obama did. In fact, he says, one of his first acts as president would be to let states opt out of the law right away (they’d still be required to come up with their own national health care law-level of coverage system until such time as Congress repealed the health care reform law).
Still, Romney knows he has a problem, not the least of which is this 2009 CNN interview where he in fact did say that parts of the Massachusetts health care law could be a “national model.”
Here’s a version of how Romney’s brushing off the worry about health care from a Wall Street Journal report on a recent high-dollar fundraising meeting in New York:
A Romney fund-raiser said the former governor also would argue that the Massachusetts law was necessary to stave off the imminent bankruptcy of the state’s Medicaid program. The law’s requirement that most in the state buy insurance coverage had been hatched by the conservative Heritage Foundation and was used by Mr. Romney to thwart state Democrats from winning a government-run insurance option, he will argue.
Democrats — and Romney’s Republican opponents in the presidential fight — are not going to let this one go, despite Romney’s protestations. And the chance to eat a birthday cake in honor of Romney’s biggest political headache is just too delicious for Democrats to ignore. So expect another Massachusetts health care law anniversary celebration next yet when the law turns 6, assuming Romney’s then an official candidate in the presidential race.
