I refuse to engage in Romney bashing.
His health care plan obviously has problems in Massachusetts. Fine. But such a plan—using the state as a “laboratory” is consistent with the vision of the Founding Fathers. Let the various states work on their own problems. If they work, others can imitate it. If they fail, others won’t.
I do think it is a problem if Mitt doesn’t acknowledge those problems or promote solutions...but that is a separate gig.
“I refuse to engage in Romney bashing.”
No, you just bash those who bash Romney..LOL!
By traditional GOP protocol, it would be Romney's "turn" because he was the clear runner-up to McCain who was the clear runner-up to Bush. I have real problems with this system because it gave us candidates like McCain, Bob Dole and, to a lesser extent, Bush.
But we're not going to retake the whitehouse without the overwhelming majority of the Romney supporters on board and, like you, I refuse to p*ss on them.
I've noticed the Romney bashers basically fall into three categories:
1. The raving moonbat demographic who hate him mainly or solely because of his religion.
2. The promoters of equally poor or worse candidates like Mike Huckabee, some of whom are indistinguishable from category #1.
3. The rational majority who have misgivings because of his rather sparse political record, which includes his failure to distance himself from the health care fuster cluck in Massachusetts.
There was a rational reason that the majority of conservatives like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity (and many of the rest of us) went into the Romney camp after Fred Thompson dropped out of the race: He was clearly the best candidate in the remaining field.
There is also a rational reason why we aren't going there now: There is clearly a better candidate in Sarah Palin.
Using states as laboratories is one thing, but using them as laborartories for Socialism is another.
What if a governor decided to experiment with a system of taxation and wealth redistribution, that would result in every resident of that state ending up with exactly the same after tax income? Would the “laboratory” concept justify that?