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Separate and unrelated announcements by Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney made for an interesting contrast yesterday. McConnell demanded that cuts to Medicare and Medicaid be included in any deal on the debt ceiling. Romney proposed an alternative to Obama's plan for health-care reform. McConnell was interested in what the government should stop doing. Romney, though his vision would repeal the Affordable Care Act and take a state-based approach to reforms, was interested in what the government could do -- and, in his impassioned-but-doomed defense of the Massachusetts reforms, what his government did do.
To some degree, this is the difference between being a congressional opposition party and a presidential candidate. One role is about defense. The other is about offense. But as Romney found out yesterday, the way Republicans have played defense is going to make life very difficult for those Republicans who want to play offense.
Romney didn't pass an individual mandate in Massachusetts because he was more liberal than most in the Republican Party. He passed an individual mandate because he was more effective than most in the Republican Party. Almost all the GOP health-care plans introduced during the 1990s and early-Aughts included an individual mandate. Newt Gingrich supported one, and so did Bob Dole and President George H.W. Bush. But Romney did a better job than they did. He actually managed to pass his plan. He played offense more effectively. This was seen, at the time, as a great credit to him. Conservative icon Jim DeMint praised Romney's health-care plan repeatedly in 2008.
But now he's stuck. The GOP has turned against the individual mandate, and so his past as the mandate's most effective proponent is a liability. Rather than running on health-care reform, he has to run from it. But Romney isn't alone. Cap-and-trade used to be a Republican idea, too. Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman all proposed cap-and-trade plans in recent years. And all of them now have to grovel, excuse and apologize. But what happens once that process finishes?
Running for president is about having solutions to national problems. But a number of the GOP's most persuasive policy ideas have now been corrupted by Obama's embrace, and the GOP hasn't had the time to replace them. So they're left with two problems: First, many of their most credible candidates will have to twist themselves into pretzels to disavow their past support for sensible policies. But second, and perhaps more importantly, when one of their candidates makes it through that gauntlet and has to begin playing offense against President Obama, he or she is not going to have much to work with. The party is stuck in the defensive mode of the last two years, and it's not at all clear that they'll be willing to give a candidate leeway to be offensive, because being offensive in a presidential campaign means speaking about what government can, and occasionally even should, do.


Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC
1010 Wisconsin Ave., NW
Suite 705
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com
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