The SCOTUS dog and pony show wraps up today, as oral arguments shift to the concept of severability, and also something about Medicaid expansion. It seems that things didn’t go all that well yesterday, sending liberals into a tizzy. I mean, so Fat Tony was mean to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli (who doesn’t sound like he was exactly up for the job). Big deal. What did people expect? Sounds like the left-leaning justices had to bail Verrilli out.
So, it’s hump day. This has been a pretty crappy week so far. Hopefully the last three days will go fast.
On Leno, last night, Mittens twisted his ever writhing tongue into a plug for the individual mandate:
last night Mitt Romney told Jay Leno that his policy towards uninsured people with pre-existing conditions would basically be to tell them tough luck:
ROMNEY: Well, if they’re 45 years old and they show up they say ‘I want insurance because I’ve got a heart disease,’ it’s like hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you are well, and then if you get ill then you’re going to be covered.
Leno, to his credit, pushed back on Romney, pointing out that under Obamacare, everybody will be able to buy insurance, regardless of whether or not they have a pre-existing condition:
LENO: Yeah, but they’re a lot of people that I see, I only mention this because I know guys that work in the auto industry and they’re just not covered because they work in brake dust, and they could get [ill], so they were just never able to get insurance. And then they get to be 30 and 35, and they were never able to get insurance before. Now they have it. That seems like a good thing.
Romney seemed to recognize that he’d just walked himself into a trap, because he started to back away from what he’d just said, saying he would “look at” the problem outlined by Leno:
ROMNEY: Well, we’ll look at a circumstance where someone was ill and hasn’t been insured so far.
Romney then tried to deny the problem exists, suggesting that employers already cover all their employees:
But people who have had the chance to be insured, if you’re working in an auto business, for instance, the companies carry insurance, they insure all their employees, you look at the circumstances that exist. But the people who have done their best to get insured are going to be able to be covered.
That part of his answer was basically gibberish, but Romney’s conclusion was surprising:
But you don’t want everyone saying ‘I’m going to sit back until I get sick and then go get insurance.’ That doesn’t make sense. But you’d have to find rules that get people in that are playing by the rules.
(From Dailykos)
It is as if Romney knows the talking points but has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s beginning to remind me of Victoria Jackson.
Arlen Specter, the former moderate Republican Pennsylvania senator who switched to the Democratic party in 2009 and now performs standup comedy, told a joke about Mitt Romney on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that stunned the other panelists.
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Paraphrasing a recent joke by Bill Maher, Specter said, “Mitt Romney has changed positions more often than a pornographic movie queen.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/28/arlen-specter-mitt-romney-pornographic-movie-queen_n_1384771.html