How is it possible the Romney camp didn't have a politically astute and thoroughly vetted answer to the Roberts decision on Obamacare? Now, granted, no one thought the ACA would be passed by the chief justice rewriting the mandate into a tax, a sort of reverse alchemy of conservative gold being turned into lead - so I guess maybe that was a bit of a monkey wrench - still, it seems clear Roberts felt he could get away with playing upside down alchemist because calling the mandate a tax would prove more curse than blessing for Obama, that Obama et al would accordingly be constrained and limited government in theory preserved - so how is it the Romney camp then comes out and says, no, it's really a mandate? And then a few days after witnessing how this tin eared foolishness was being cheered by liberals and ridiculed by conservatives Romney then comes out and says well actually I guess it is a tax? How can this happen?
I really wanna believe Romney is up to the challenge of winning this thing - but as I've said, regardless of how bad things may seem, Obama has so many built in advantages [power of incumbency, compliant media and press, locked in constituencies that are utterly incapable of seeing him in anything but a positive light etc etc] that you're simply not gonna beat him unless you run a very aggressive and very smart campaign - you cannot make mistakes like this and hope to beat the guy. Rupert Murdoch made news a few days ago by biliously opining that Romney needed to replace his inner circle - seemed a bit angry and vindictive at the time but maybe he was right on because what this blunder tells me is that they still haven't figured out how to talk about Romneycare - that's inexcusable if true.
