WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney has been pretty exuberant in the Obama-bashing lately, giving a red meat speech to the conservative gathering CPAC last month and launching an early 2012 campaign swing (disguised as a book tour) this month to help boost his visibility.
But on the topic Republicans are the most eager to bash the White House for these days -- healthcare reform -- Romney's in a bit of a bind. The Massachusetts healthcare reform plan that he helped pass as governor shares a lot of the features of President Obama's plan: individual mandates, subsidies for people who can't afford insurance, expanded Medicaid benefits.
Which made for a bit of an awkward Sunday morning for Romney on Fox News. Host Chris Wallace -- who, like his colleagues, isn't exactly a strong supporter of the Obama proposal -- pressed the presumptive GOP front-runner on the issue.
"We got a lot of e-mail from conservatives this week who said that you are the wrong man to be making that point, and they pointed specifically to your role in passing health care reform in Massachusetts," he said.
Romney tried to push back, saying premiums have risen slower in Massachusetts than they have in the rest of the country. But he also seemed to endorse the individual mandates in Obama's proposal.
"There's a big difference between what we did and what President Obama is doing," he said. "What we did, I think, is the ultimate conservative plan. We said people have to take responsibility for getting insurance, if they can afford it, or paying their own way. No more free-riders."
That is, of course, the exact theory behind the mandates in the White House proposal -- that the only way to ban insurers from denying coverage due to preexisting conditions is to expand the risk pools by making people "take responsibility for getting insurance." Democrats were quick to point the line out, sending e-mail to reporters Sunday afternoon.
Romney being Romney, chances are he'll find a better way to talk about the issue soon. But it could still dog him for as long as healthcare remains a hot topic. So like Obama, Romney is probably eager for Washington to move onto something -- anything -- else.
Watch the Wallace and Romney interview here:
Lately, the right has jumped at every chance it gets to portray Democrats as doing all sorts of malicious, underhanded things to get healthcare reform passed. Apparently, for Fox News' Glenn Beck, that even extends to embracing a congressman who voted against the House's bill because it wasn't liberal enough.
Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., will be Beck's guest for a full hour of television, the host announced on Twitter Monday. "I just spoke with him off air," Beck wrote. "All Americans need To (sic) hear him."
The conspiracy theory Massa advanced this past weekend is likely what drew conspiracy lover Beck's attention. In a radio interview, Massa claimed that the reason the House ethics committee is investigating allegations that he sexually harrassed a male staffer -- indeed, the reason he ultimately decided to resign from Congress -- is that Democratic leaders want him gone because he was a "no" vote on healthcare.
During his time in California's Senate, Roy Ashburn voted against every single gay rights measure that came up. That made the story of his arrest two weeks ago -- he was pulled over for drunk driving after leaving a gay bar, and he had another man in the car with him -- more than a little interesting.
On Monday, Ashburn admitted to what everyone had pretty much figured out now.
"I'm gay," he said in a radio interview. "Those are the words that have been so difficult for me for so long." The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert blog reports that Ashburn explained that he voted the way he did on gay rights because he felt that's what the voters of his district wanted.
WASHINGTON -- Have Republicans finally realized no one cares about Senate procedures?
For two weeks, the GOP has been squawking about the budget reconciliation process, protesting that passing any part of healthcare reform by a majority vote (instead of the 60 votes it takes to shut off a filibuster) would be an abuse of the rules. But on Monday morning, speaking to about two dozen political reporters for a solid 30 minutes, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, barely mentioned reconciliation. Cornyn said there wasn't much reason for the White House to care if the "fixes" to the healthcare bill actually passed that way, as long as the House adopts the Senate's already-passed version of the legislation. But otherwise, he didn't push the notion that the process was somehow going to alarm voters.
That's probably smart. There's no reason to think voters actually care which set of its own internal rules the Senate uses to deal with legislation. And Democrats were ready to battle over the procedures by pointing out the quixotic lengths Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., went to last week to block an extension of unemployment benefits.
So by Monday, Cornyn didn't even bother with a half-hearted "they're going to cram this down your throats" line -- a sure sign that the whole future of the healthcare bill will effectively come down to whether House Democratic leaders can persuade enough of their members to swallow the Senate bill.
Cornyn did say, though, that there's essentially no political risk for Republicans to oppose the healthcare bill as dogmatically as they have been doing. "There is a time to say 'no,'" he said. "I don't think there's any downside in saying 'no' to that." If the bill does pass, despite the unified Republican stance against it, they'll make repealing it a centerpiece of their campaigns this fall.
More than a year into his tenure in office, President Obama still hasn't managed to get someone confirmed as the head of the Transportation Security Administration. But on Monday the White House did at least announce the president's latest pick for the job, retired Gen. Robert Harding.
Obama's first choice for the job, Erroll Southers, withdrew his name in January. That was despite a brief furor, which began in the wake of the attempted plane bombing on Christmas, over the fact that Senate Republicans had been holding up Southers' confirmation.
It will be interesting to see how hard the administration is willing to fight for Harding. Shortly after he withdrew his name, Southers told Salon, "I wish someone would ahve defended me more aggressively."
The last day that Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., spends in Congress will not be a quiet one.
Massa is leaving the House of Representatives Monday afternoon, after serving less than one full term, because of allegations that he sexually harassed a male staffer. Many congressman would try to head silently for the exit in a situation like that -- but apparently not Massa.
On Sunday, Massa told a radio station in New York that he's been railroaded out of office because he voted against the House healthcare reform bill last fall.
“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill, and this administration and this House leadership have said,'they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill, and now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots," Massa said. "I was set up for this from the very, very beginning."
He also specifically went after White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, a favorite target for liberals these days.
"Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil’s spawn... He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote," Massa said.
Update: During the interview, Massa also gave his side of the story of the harassment allegations against him. The way he tells it, it sounds pretty innocent. Of course, that's the way he tells it. The fact that a complaint was made and that he ended up resigning from Congress because of it would suggest that maybe something more was going on -- we'll have to wait for more facts to come out.
But, via Roll Call, here's some of Massa's story:
"On New Year’s Eve, I went to a staff party. It was actually a wedding for a staff member of mine; there were over 250 people there. I was with my wife. And in fact we had a great time. She got the stomach flu,” he said.
Massa explained that he then danced first with the bride, who was not identified, and then with a bridesmaid. He said multiple cameras recorded the incident.
"I said goodnight to the bridesmaid,” Massa continued. “I sat down at the table where my whole staff was, all of them by the way bachelors.”
“One of them looked at me and as they would do after, I don’t know, 15 gin and tonics, and goodness only knows how many bottles of champagne, a staff member made an intonation to me that maybe I should be chasing after the bridesmaid and his points were clear and his words were far more colorful than that,” Massa said. “And I grabbed the staff member sitting next to me and said, ‘Well, what I really ought to be doing is fracking you.’ And then [I] tossled the guy’s hair and left, went to my room, because I knew the party was getting to a point where it wasn’t right for me to be there. Now was that inappropriate of me? Absolutely. Am I guilty? Yes."
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
Obama, Liz Cheney Lack Faith in American Justice System
