Masscare may be to Romney in 2012 what abortion was in 2008—an issue where a critical mass of conservatives don’t quite buy his explanations (and I say this as someone who likes and respects Romney and wishes him well). The best thing for Romney to say, I think, is that he flat-out made a mistake, that he tried an idea that ran off the rails. It would also have the advantage of being true. But he can’t bring himself to go there yet. ~Rich Lowry

Jim Antle ably points out the problems with this, but I would add two other observations. Whatever appeal Romney has is built around his reputation for competence and policy wonkery. When it is a subject he has actually bothered to learn something out (i.e., not foreign policy), he can speak very knowledgeably and in great detail. Given that reputation, how could the competent, wonkish executive sign off on a piece of legislation that he should have known would create a fiscal nightmare for the state in a few years’ time? There is another point related to this. Romney does not have much experience in political office, and so has leaned heavily on his record in the private sector to supplement his short time in government. His signature achievement does not include any of the containment or reduction in costs that was typical of Romney’s work for Bain. If MassCare is the result of bringing Romney’s business acumen to government, what exactly would be the benefit of his election as President?

When Romney is being “himself,” we are told, he is the problem-solving pragmatist, but all that he really did in Massachusetts was to exacerbate the problem of health care costs and now he desperately hides behind federalist arguments to excuse his remarkably poor judgment. Indeed, the federalist argument for state-by-state health care legislation requires that the person making it point to Massachusetts as an example of a terrible, failed experiment. If we want to liken states to laboratories, Romney set his lab on fire on the way out the door. That hasn’t stopped him from proudly pointing to the burning structure he left behind as evidence of his effectiveness as an executive and a reason why he should be entrusted with even greater power.

One advantage that Romney’s perpetual position-switching used to give him was that it created the impression that Romney was very pliable and would not persist stubbornly in a position out of deep-seated conviction or arrogance. The argument went something like this: however untrustworthy Romney seemed, and no matter how much he would pander to every audience to win votes, he would never be as willfully blind to reality as Bush was. Since the beginning of the health care debate, Romney has started to combine the worst traits of his previous presidential campaign and that stubborn obliviousness that defined Bush: he cannot let go of the Massachusetts health care bill, he cannot really acknowledge the mistakes that he helped to make, and yet he wants to make himself the standard-bearer of the opposition to the very same kind of thing he supported just a few years ago and still will not repudiate.

This is related to what distinguished Romney from other panderers and opportunists. All politicians tell us what they think we want to hear, and many of them will engage in the most absurd contortionism to run away from previous positions that are no longer popular or useful, but very few of them will do all of that and then claim to be some high-minded, principled, newly-converted opponent of all the things that they endorsed yesterday. There is a passage in Game Change about Romney’s presidential campaign that sums this up nicely:

Unlike Giuliani, Romney had no reticence about slashing at his rivals. But the perception of him as a man without convictions made him a less-than-effective delivery system for policy contrasts. The combination of the vitriol of his attacks and his apparent corelessness explained the antipathy the other candidates had toward him. (p.294)

So Romney now insists that the Massachusetts legislation is working when it isn’t, and that he never made an error in judgment when he did, and he will probably then start denouncing anyone on his side who does not want to make repeal the heart of the Republican platform. What is important to remember here is that the policy issue could be almost anything. It need not be health care. Romney would still engage in the same holier-than-thou latecomer routine that he has been practicing for at least five years.