Here is what Romney, so far in this campaign, has said. No changes to any entitlement programs for any seniors for the next 10 years. No specifics on how quickly his Medicare vouchers will grow for future seniors. No specifics on which tax breaks he’ll eliminate in order to offset the multi-trillion dollar cost of his tax cuts. No specific plan naming the cuts he’ll make to reach his $7 trillion target. No specifics on how he’ll equalize tax treatment of employer and individual health care. It is a campaign based on the principle of “not us, not now.”
“Real leaders do not follow polls,” Christie continued. “Real leaders change polls.”
And perhaps they do. But so far, the Romney campaign appears to have followed quite a number of polls.
In 2009, Romney wrote an op-ed for USA Today in which he advised President Obama to apply “the lessons we learned in Massachusetts” to his health-care reform. Among those lessons was that “using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.” That is to say, among those lessons was to include an individual mandate in the plan. Romney later said the mandate was “unconstitutional.”
MORE: A very strange argument for Mitt Romney.