According to the Boston Globe, Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) has had quite the week on health care reform: first he was for it, now he’s against it, and all to win the Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat.
It started after the House passed a health care reform bill with the Stupak Amendment, which many pro-choice advocates believe is a restriction on a woman’s right to choose. Capuano voted for the overall bill; meanwhile, his primary rival for the Senate seat, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, blasted the bill, saying that she couldn’t vote for a bill that restricted the right to choose.
Here’s where it gets tricky. Capuano first found Coakley’s position a gift, calling it “manna from heaven” for his campaign. His campaign sent out an e-mail with the subject line “Either You Do Or You Don’t,” and capped off his position by, as the Globe reports, saying at a rally:
“I have never once, or almost never, voted on a major piece of legislation that was all good or all bad…Do you think that when they voted on Medicare that it was a perfect bill? Or Social Security? Or the Civil Rights Act? Every one of those bills was major progress with flaws in the bill.”
But that rhetoric changed yesterday when Capuano reversed position; now he says: “If the bill comes back the same way as it left the House, I would vote against it.” How does he account for the change? He says “If [Coakley] had her way, the debate about health care reform would be dead for the session and probably dead for another 10 years.” Of his vote: “I chose to keep the health care debate alive.”
