Andrea Saul, the indeed-attractive-but-horrifyingly-Republican-faced press secretary for the Mitt Romney campaign, made the latest of a series of unforced errors today when she said, “if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.” In case you are somehow unaware, praise for the health care reform instituted under Romney’s governorship in MA, “Romneycare,” is uncharacteristic of Romney’s campaign. Despite the widespread popularity of the reform amongst MA citizens, critics have noted a number of affinities to President Obama’s divisive health care legislation (Obama has called Romneycare his “blueprint”).
Saul’s comments came in response to a particularly harsh anti-Romney ad in which a former steel mill worker laid off by the Romney-led firm Bain Capital associates the sudden loss of his employee health care to the death of his wife. In my opinion, it is important to put a human face on things like layoff when we consider Bain and its practices as one of the three major items on Mitt Romney’s resume. However, I find the ad itself perhaps “too human,” intentionally exploitative of real human suffering to prop up a very very vague political point. More importantly, it seems almost purposefully crafted to bait a Romney surrogate into a response like Saul’s.
The Reaction:
Out in pundit-world, conservatives jumped on Saul immediately. However, I have encountered an uncommon counter-argument:
“If Romney gets smart, he’ll embrace Romneycare and make it a states’ rights issue,” said a number of younger republicans on the message boards this evening (What? This is a blog, not Journalism.)
Well, he tried that during the primary and was shillelaghed with boos from the crowd. He can’t embrace it too much; it’s just too toxic an issue amongst his base. Plus, every positive thing he says about it gets immediately scooped up by the left and used against him. The “it’s right for my state but not right for the whole country” argument has A) never been well-articulated and B) would rely too heavily on nuanced policy-talk to strike the no-compromise chord of far-right voters.
One More Thing:
On the heels of a disastrous trip around the world in which he managed to offend just about every country that answers our phone calls, one might wonder why stuff like this keeps happening. The accident-prone Romney campaign has seemingly no control over its message or its surrogates. This, I imagine, is why Obama is up in the polls.
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