Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a tea party star and ardent opponent of the Democratic health care reform law, neatly summarizes conservative anguish over Mitt Romney’s ascension to leader of the GOP in a new interview with The Daily Caller.
Asked by The Daily Caller how, in a nation of a roughly 310 million people, the Republican Party is set to nominate the only person other than President Barack Obama to sign an individual health insurance mandate into law, Cuccinelli said he was “not quite sure how to answer.”
“He just outlasted everybody else up to this point,” Cuccinelli, one of the GOP’s most outspoken critics of the individual mandate, said. “[Rick] Santorum’s not out yet, but the math is looking pretty ugly for him.”
Cuccinelli says he won’t make an endorsement in the GOP primary race, but the Caller interview shows he expects Romney to win. While that may make it harder for Republicans to separate their nominee from Obama on health care, Cuccinelli said he doesn’t doubt Romney’s promise to bring down the reform law.
“I will say, I don’t think anybody really doubts his commitment to signing a repeal bill if it gets to his desk, so I don’t think that creates a real problem,” Cuccinelli told the caller, “but it is surprising, when the biggest issue of 2010 for Republicans taking so many seats in the House was the health care issue, to see the presidential race work out the way it has.”
