The turning point in Sen. Rick Santorum’s surprisingly successful primary campaign arrived during a January debate in Florida, where Santorum underscored Mitt Romney’s vulnerability on the healthcare issue:
Think about what that means going up against Barack Obama, who, you are going to claim, “Well, top-down government-run medicine at the federal level doesn’t work work and we should repeal it,” and he’s going to say, “Wait a minute, Governor. You just said that top-down government-run medicine in Massachusetts works well.” Folks, we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom… Those are not the clear contrasts we need if we’re going to defeat Barack Obama…
As Business Insider’s Grace Wyler noted at the time, “Mitt Romney was finally forced to play some serious defense…”
The healthcare issue itself was tangential to Santorum’s rise; social conservatives’ discontent with Romney ran far deeper than that. But it was during exchange that Santorum gained traction and became the most credible Not-Romney.
At this stage of the general-election campaign, it’s worth asking: Was Santorum right? Does the nomination of Romney effectively “give away” the healthcare issue for Republicans?
For the answer to that question, well, just listen to Romney flailing (h/t Jonathan Chait):
Actually, the — chief justice, in his opinion, made it very clear that, at the state level — states have the power to put in place mandates. They don’t need to require them to be called taxes in order for them to be constitutional. And — and as a result, Massachusetts’ mandate was a mandate, was a penalty, was described that way by the legislature and by me. And so it stays as it was.
Sympathizers may object that the Chief Justice John Roberts put Romney in an awkward position by wiping out the federalism argument in favor of Massachusetts’ mandate — which is true as far as it goes. Yet Santorum’s broader point was that it should not have mattered how the Supreme Court ruled on Obamacare; a Republican who hadn’t been previously tainted would have been able to command the healthcare issue independently of any help or hindrance from the judiciary.
None of this is to say that healthcare has become an advantage for Democrats. Rather, it is to suggest the issue has a become a wash — a non-advantage for Republicans. In a close election, it seems to me that could prove quite significant.
Clint 
frank 
TomB 
The GOP is stuck. The base wants to get rid of Obamacare, but there are certainly a large number of voters who want some kind of reform to healthcare. Is Romney in a position to offer an alternative that will satisfy the base and satisfy the demand for reform? He can try to keep all the focus on Obamacare’s negatives, but sooner or later his own voters, not independent who favor reform, are going to want to know what his alternative might be. There’s a slight advantage for Obama in all this, as he can claim to be doing something and send a single message to his base and independents, while Romney has to contradict himself every time he talks about this. That Obamacare isn’t really popular and is nobody’s first-choice policy, except the insurance companies’, is a weakness, but one Mitt can’t exploit.