Romney, Health Care, Federalism

by Smitty (h/t Powerline)

Fox has a story about the Massachusetts health care plan being a political sea anchor for Mitt Romney:

Massachusetts is struggling to keep the state's groundbreaking coverage program running. Against a massive budget shortfall, lawmakers are planning to cut about 30,000 legal, taxpaying immigrants out of the system, which requires nearly everyone in the state to have health insurance coverage.

Whalen said the state health care plan did not have a sufficient revenue stream from the start, and that Romney could face sharp criticism for that from fiscal conservatives in a 2012 Republican primary.

"He's highly vulnerable on this," he said.

But Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state and candidate to be Republican National Committee chairman, said the Democratic "regime" in Massachusetts is to blame since the Legislature changed the plan that Romney originally put on the table. Romney vetoed a number of those changes when he was governor, but the General Assembly overrode him.

Judson Berger and Molly Line, who contributed the story, need to be taken to task for missing the forest while staring at the tree: the Massachusetts plan is how it is supposed to work.

• A state taking care of her citizens is the Constitutional model.
• A state legislature making tweaks to fit the local tastes is more responsive and responsible (for better or worse).
• A socialized program forced to work within actual tax receipts Just Makes Sense.
• The Massachusetts border being a bulkhead against scatalogical management crapflooding the neighboring states with moronic policy and debt.
• Keeping the Federal government out of the picture both honors the 10th Amendment and leaves open delegating a useful oversight function to the Fed.

Let's have a debate about health care, and consider very carefully the health of the system itself. Federal entitlements are a Progressive train wreck; it is unclear how running a few more cars of money down the rails and into the heap helps anyone but those managing the rails.

The Federalist concept of delegating exactly the amount of power necessary to Washington, DC, and no more grows increasingly wise over time. Yet we're on the verge of having voted that away.

I care not fig #1 whether Mitt Romney, or Sarah Palin, or Mike Huckabee, or Tim Pawlenty, or Bobbie Jindal, or, *gasp* Ron Paul, or even a freshly-conscious Colin Powell (!) fronts the basic, simple, obvious, transparent, clean, sustainable principles of Federalism inherent in the Constitution.

If Mitt Romney segues from a state governor with some experience in health care implementation to a Federalist warrior bent on restoring state's rights, and implementing the Federalism Amendment, he's got my support.

Conversely, and I don't think it likely, but if Sarah Palin runs a Long Haired Barack campaign, replete with personality cult and paper-thin promises that just moves the country infinitesimally closer to tyranny, then she's lost me. I think the New England, Noonan-approved, Progressive elite could be replaced with a button marked 'Yawn'. We must esteem principle over personality, or we've lost the intellectual battle before even suiting up for combat.

I'd like to thank every American attending Tea Party protests. The fact that so many brave souls are out there, spelling errors on their signs and all, returns "We the People" to hard reality from the memory hole. Posts like this one seem less historical romanticism and wishful thinking and more possible, thanks to those Just Folks.