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Mitt Romney has appointed ObamaCare profiteer and former Utah governor Mike Leavitt to head his presidential transition team.

Mark Levin is now insisting that Romney reveal his plans on how he wants to replace Obamacare and fix the other entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, etc. He understand that there may be strategic reasons for keeping it quiet, but considering the fact that Romney is making some very liberal appointments to his team including his transition team appointment Mike Leavitt, a guy who has been pushing for health care exchanges in the states, Levin feels its high time for Romney to explain to the American people what we should expect from a Romney presidency in terms of repealing/replacing...

The former Bush cabinet member is a close confidant of the GOP presidential contender, but his support for a key part of Obamacare has conservatives furious. *He has been a prominent backer of one element of Obamacare. Even as Obamacare has become the GOP's bete noire, Leavitt has vocally backed one provision of the law: state-level health-insurance exchanges. As part of the law's expansion of insurance, these exchanges allow citizens to shop for insurance from private companies, and if they qualify they can use federal subsidies to purchase coverage. Insurance companies accepted various strictures -- most notably, the ban on...

Over the weekend, Politico broke the news that Mitt Romney had tapped Mike Leavitt, the former Utah Governor and HHS Secretary under George W. Bush, to lead the transition effort should Romney win the presidency. This is a very worrisome signal to conservatives holding out hope that Romney will live up to his promises to fight for limited government if elected. As Ben Domenech details, Leavitt is one of the few Republicans who has been actively campaigning for governors to implement Obamacare’s health care exchanges at the state level. [....] Leavitt has shown time and again that he is to...

One of the few Republicans in the country who's been tirelessly pushing for the implementation of Obamacare at the state level has been tapped to head Mitt Romney's transition team, should he become president. Former HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, and his consulting group Leavitt Partners, are the primary advocates within Republican circles for implementation of Obamacare's exchanges. It just so happens that his consultancy is one of the major beneficiaries of the taxpayer funded gold mine of hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange implementation grants.

As I mentioned yesterday, back in 2009 Mitt Romney took to the pages of USA Today to tell President Obama that as he came up with a healthcare plan he should consider using “tax penalties” as Massachusetts did or “tax credits, as others have proposed” to help cover the costs of health care. The “tax penalties” is Mitt Romney’s individual mandate, a key portion the Obama Administration has credited all along as having been embraced in Obamacare. Since pointing out yesterday that, in his own words, Mitt Romney supported a national individual mandate, his supporters have gone totally insane on...

Republican strategists should generally be wary of campaign advice from liberals -- and when it's from the media, generally becomes definitely. Washington Post political writer Chris Cillizza recently suggested Mitt Romney's general-election strategy should start with getting a "positive first introduction" to voters through the liberal media because "only the national media can provide that megaphone and serve as a sort of validator for him." How hard did he laugh after he wrote that? No Republican should think he could end-run the liberal media establishment entirely and not suffer damage. Ask Dick Cheney. On the other hand, no Republican can...

Youtube video where Romney explains his and the Mormon Church's views on abortion.

A top Democrat in the Senate took a rare direct shot at GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney on Tuesday, arguing that Romney's past support of health care reform means the issue is "off the table" during the fall elections. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the Democratic Conference vice chairman and former head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, blasted Romney during an outdoor press conference near the Supreme Court. The court is spending this week reviewing the constitutionality of the 2010 health care reform law that is President Barack Obama's signature domestic achievement. Schumer said Romney's support of a...

Jim Pethokoukis spotlights a new Health Affairs study on how Romneycare laid the foundation for Obamacare, and what it portends for the federal health insurance scene. In short: Expanded government coverage, higher taxpayer costs. Read here for details and analysis. His conclusion: The authors conclude that based on the Romneycare experience, Obamacare will improve coverage and not kill employer-based insurance, but containing costs will be a “considerable challenge.” That is probably the avenue Romney should use to a) attack Obamacare and b) present his own national health reform. But this study will perpetuate the meme that Romneycare was the prototype...

...Romney said, “If they are 45 years old and they show up and say I want insurance because I have 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, you are going to be covered.”

Armies of GOP establishment-friendly commentators tell us the Republican primary process is ugly and self-destructive. Further, they insist should Romney prove incapable of gathering the necessary delegates to secure a first-ballot nomination, horror of horrors, it will result in a tumultuous brokered convention.“The big change in American politics over the past two decades has been the decline of followership,” writes David Frum, the voice of the Republican establishment at CNN.com. “Party members expect the party to serve them – one major reason that both parties have drifted to the ideological extremes since the 1970s. “That expectation would only be intensified...

Left-wing pundits and politicos continue to insist that Mitt Romney has yet to express what he wants to accomplish as President. Somehow they seem to ignore his call for a 20% across the board tax cut, repeal of ObamaCare, and enactment of a comprehensive energy plan. Maybe they didn’t notice his plans to balance the budget and strengthen the military, and thus gain greater respect and trust around the world. But for some reason, President Obama hasn’t been pressed at all to state what he wants to accomplish if he were given four more years in the White House. Through...

In what is being seen as a preview of a fully implemented Obamacare, government officials in Michigan are demanding that a 9-year-old child follow standard procedure and take a dangerous course of cancer medications that can cause additional cancer – even though the boy has had three scans indicating an absence of the disease. The case is being fought on behalf of Ken and Erin Stieler and their son Jacob by attorneys with the Home School Legal Defense Association. The organization concerns itself with home school rights, responsibilities and restrictions but also intercedes in cases that could have a significant...

Shake Shake Shake! Shake Your Romney! Shake Your Romney! Thank you Mr. Fehrnstrom for saying out loud and confirming exactly what many conservative new long ago; Mitt Romney is promising to conservatives whatever it is that he thinks they want to hear without any intention of keeping it. The only thing shocking about this revelation is that Eric Fehrnstromn said it out loud, not in a conversation he believed was off the record or private, cut being broadcast by CNN live. In case you haven’t heard what the kerfuffle is all about , here’s the interview of Mr. Fehrnstrom...

As someone who supports Rick Santorum for President, and who will caucus tomorrow in the next phase of Minnesota’s political process as a delegate, I understand the need to replace Barack Obama in 2012 in order to right the American ship of state and address the serious problems that Obama has either created, amplified, or ignored over the last three years. I do, however, wonder whether Senator Santorum understands that need. Yesterday, as Allahpundit noted with excellent analysis, Santorum told a Louisiana audience that if Mitt Romney won the nomination, we’d be better off sticking with what we’ve already got:...

Rick Santorum's latest attempt to use a Mitt Romney aide's "Etch-A-Sketch" remark against the Republican front-runner instead gave his rival a chance to fire back on Thursday, after Santorum seemed to say he'd rather see President Obama reelected than send Romney to the White House. Speaking at an event in Texas, Santorum again made the case that Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom's comments Wednesday on CNN about a "reset" of the campaign if Romney clinched the nomination showed the former Massachusetts governor's efforts to appeal to conservatives were insincere. "You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision...

Why, if there is an election in November, it will come down to Romney and Obama. Just about any question a man, woman, or child could have, God has answered in His book, the Holy Bible. Just as He has answered the question "how did the world get here?" He has also told us why, if there is an election this coming November, it will be between a Muslim and a Mormon, Obama and Romney, Obama and Obama Lite. And the devil, taking Him(Jesus) up into an high mountain, shewed unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a...

Is Mitt Romney having trouble sealing the deal on the GOP nomination because of his campaign team? The Atlantic's Molly Ball gets a handful of Republican consultants to dish on the former business consultant's current staff of political consultants: "Romney deserves a lot more out of his staff," said one senior Republican operative who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They have mishandled him. It has been a clumsy campaign that lacks a message and has relied on a crutch of negative ad spending to make up for its weakness." Myopic, insular and overconfident, Team Romney has squandered the candidate's strengths...

They say all things must end, but the wrangling over Mitt Romney's support for an individual health-insurance mandate persists without letup. It has been nearly six years since Romney, with much fanfare, signed the Massachusetts health-care overhaul into law. On the eve of the signing ceremony he had praised the bill's requirement that every resident obtain health insurance, and suggested with pride that the rest of the nation might want to follow the Bay State's lead. "How much of our health-care plan applies to other states?" he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. "A lot." It was a message he...