Free Republic

AS I SEE IT Congress must repeal Obama's health-care rationing plan By SEN. PAT ROBERTS Special to The Star SNIPPET: "U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican from Dodge City, Kan., is a member of the Senate Health and Finance committees. He voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." SNIPPET: "It has scarcely been three months since the new health reforms, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), were signed into law. Unfortunately, as I and many of my colleagues predicted, the promises made to the American people by the president and the majority are already unraveling. The...

WASHINGTON – Republicans were for President Barack Obama's requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been on the wrong side of the defining political battle of our time. Mr. Romney claimed that the Massachusetts health reform plan is "the ultimate conservative plan." But there are many similarities between it and the ObamaCare loathed by conservative voters. Both have an individual mandate requiring most residents to have health insurance or pay a penalty. Most businesses are required to participate or pay a fine. Both rely on government-designed purchasing exchanges that also provide a platform to control private health insurance. And the apparatus requires a plethora of new government boards and...

The Massachusetts health care reform law has become an unfortunate victim of politics. Democrats in Washington say that their unpopular takeover of the nation’s health care sector – with its higher taxes, cuts to seniors on Medicare and price controls — is somehow modeled on the Massachusetts law. On the other end of the political spectrum, conservatives implausibly claim it is “bankrupting” the state.

Critical Mass   [Mark Steyn] Kathryn, Grace-Marie Turner's analysis is well worth reading. I sympathize with Mitt Romney (his health-care plan was really the only big signature legislation of a very brief time in executive politics), but what he did is part of the problem, not the solution.According to what he's told at least a couple of NR audiences I've been among, he sought to solve a problem that doesn't exist — ie, that the uninsured are using emergency rooms as their family doctor, and supposedly the rest of the populace has to pick up the tab for that in...

An ABC News review of Mitt Romney’s new book ends thus: “If history is any guide, however, Romney stands a decent chance of getting his party’s nod. Although he was hurt last time by questions about his authenticity, Republicans have a long tradition of nominating second-time candidates: think Richard Nixon in 1968, Ronald Reagan in 1980, George H.W. Bush in 1988, Bob Dole in 1996, and John McCain in 2008″ This is the conventional wisdom; we’re all used to hearing it. It’s the idea that Republicans nominate the “next-in-line” candidate, or the runner-up from last season’s primaries. It’s superficially plausible....

I watched the Mitt Romney interview on Fox News Watch with Chris Wallace this morning. I actually watched twice, I was stunned. What a debacle! Apparently, this was his opening gambit in his 2012 Presidential campaign, since he has written a book. Wallace, by far the most skilled of the talking head interviewers, pressed Romney on his two primary claims: that Obama has spent his first year apologizing for being an American, and that his health care plan is awful. Romney was unable to delineate any major differences between the plan he developed in Massachusetts and Obama’s, except that the...

Mass. Health Insurers Want Significant Rate HikesMar 6, 2010 3:43 pm US/Eastern BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts health insurance companies have asked the state to approve significant rate hikes, weeks after Gov. Deval Patrick warned his administration might turn down increases it deemed excessive. The insurers have asked for increases of 8 to 32 percent, starting April 1. Last month, Patrick said the state Division of Insurance would review rate increases higher than 4.8 percent as part of a broader effort to control health care expenses. The Boston Globe reports that if the state rejects the increases, it would be the...

The United States presidential election of 2012 is the next United States presidential election, to be held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. It will be the 57th quadrennial presidential election in which presidential electors, who will actually elect the President and the Vice President of the United States on December 17, 2012, will be chosen. Democratic President Barack Obama will be eligible to run for his second and final term during this election. Tina Hemond political analyst comments on how the U.S. Presidential 2012 race is heating up. She writes, “With Jay Leno back in NBC’s preferred timeslot the battle...

When Mitt Romney, candidate for president, came to the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2007, he was a fresh-faced over-eager student of Republican politics: He won cheers for a newfound social conservatism, and won a straw poll amid charges he’d packed the hall. Romney ended his candidacy in an emotional speech to CPAC the next year, and in 2009 he used the forum to open a critique of President Barack Obama that he spent the next year refining. The new Romney, received Thursday as the favorite son at the gathering of conservative activists, is a more constant, seasoned, and comfortable...

Well, sort of. Remember that story about Romney being threatened on a plane? Here’s the other side of it. And against all odds, given the anger of the confrontation, it’s … surprisingly sweet.

Described as ‘Mardi Gras for the Right’, CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) opened this morning at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington D.C. Excited GOP power players, power player makers, and everyday citizens concerned about the abuse of political power are streaming through the doors. The three-day conference will be filled with speeches, exhibits, forums, panel discussions, book signings, networking, hospitality suites, banquets, and entertainment. Among official bloggers attending is our own Nate Gunderson. He will be posting blog updates and sending live tweets. We’ve already received several tweets today from Nate, including one received this morning: “Governor Romney...

One of the first big moves of 2012 -- “Mitt Romney Names Matt Rhoades PAC Executive Director: BOSTON -- Mitt Romney's Free and Strong America PAC announced today that Matt Rhoades, who has held senior positions on major presidential campaigns and at the Republican National Committee, will serve as the PAC's executive director. … .................................................... Rhoades, who's moving to Boston, is a well-regarded guy whose return to Romney pretty much confirms what will surprise nobody: That he's running in 2012. He's also, incidentally, been valued for his relationship with a key player in any GOP primary, Matt Drudge.

Health Care? Don't Mention It! The Wall Street Journal ^ | 02-04-10 | JOHN FUND Posted on Thursday, February 04, 2010 11:24:26 PM by GOP_Lady Democrats privately lay into President Obama for his lack of a health-care strategy. President Obama's session with Democratic Senators yesterday was carefully scripted, with the questioners all selected in advance by the Democratic leadership to address issues such as partisan gridlock and GOP obstructionism. Senators Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln, both of whom are facing serious opponents this fall, went off message with concerns about the liberal drift of the administration, but all other questioners...

Various representatives of the Barack Obama administration were out on the Sunday talk shows in the U.S. today, trying to spin the election of Senator Scott Brown (R -MA) [and how often do you see that abbreviation?] as being an endorsement of the Obama agenda, particularly with regard to health care. I witnessed the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, on "Fox News Sunday," trying to do this very thing. Gibbs was making the very same kinds of arguments to host Chris Wallace as Howard Dean tried making a few days ago to MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Wallace was a lot...

The upper echelon of Republican Scott Brown’s Senate campaign in Massachusetts is filled with staffers who once worked in former Gov. Mitt Romney’s employ. But with the eyes of the nation on the state’s Jan. 19 special Senate election — and with other Republican luminaries such as Rudy Giuliani traipsing through Massachusetts for Brown in recent days — Romney himself has been conspicuously absent. Despite his status as one of the GOP’s most prominent national figures and a prospective 2012 presidential candidate, the former Massachusetts governor hasn’t appeared publicly with Brown since late October. Back then, when almost no one...

Anyone see the hit piece on Palin? I can't believe what I heard/saw.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Sarah Palin believed that Sen. John McCain chose her to be his running mate in 2008 because of "God's plan," according to a top political strategist in the Arizona Republican's campaign. In an interview with the CBS news magazine "60 Minutes," Steve Schmidt described Palin as "very calm—nonplussed" after McCain met with her at his Arizona ranch just before putting her on the Republican ticket. McCain had planned to name Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., as his vice presidential choice until word leaked, sparking what Schmidt called political blowback over picking the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee. Schmidt...

Here is video of former Gov. Mitt Romney going "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren...(Videos)Romney said Obama should keep his promise to show the health care debate on C-SPAN, but he also pointed out that Obama has made"a lot bigger promises that he's not kept." Romney said Obama has been "very unsuccessful in his first year, has not been able to accomplish virtually anything" and said that he is "pinning all of his hopes on seeing something happen on health care." In part two Greta asked Romney if he is planning on running in 2012, Romney answered "haven't made...

Besides the occasional Republican either voting for socialized medicine or preventing a filibuster of it, the guilt of the association with the proposal that passed the Senate and the GOP is very deep. In fact the recent bill, without the public option (but will force people into public care) looks increasingly like the failed experiment of Massachusetts.