William Saletan tracks Mitt Romney's "evolving" (i.e., changing with the winds) stance on whether a mandate is a tax or a tax is a mandate or if either is bad or whatever.
Seems to me the flip-flop since the SCOTUS decision worked like this: The Supremes said 5-4 that the mandate of "Obamacare" was really a tax. Romney's forces decided they had to argue against that because then people would say, "Oh, then when Romney championed that mandate in Massachusetts, he was raising taxes." And "raising taxes" is an obscenity with Romney's base. It's fine with them to spend money on things like wars and oil subsidies and plunge us into further debt that could/should be paid for with a tax hike. And it's bad but not that horrible to impose a mandate that some must pay, just so long as it's not imposed by a Democrat. But "raising taxes," regardless of the amount or purpose, is evil. So the Romney camp felt they had to argue that the fees that a small group of people (mostly rich ones) must pay under the Affordable Care Act were not "taxes."
And then some Republican strategists decided that it would serve them better if those fees were considered "taxes." Then they could argue that Obama had broken his promise not to raise taxes on the Middle and Lower Class. With these folks, the only thing worse than raising taxes is breaking your promise not to raise taxes because then you're not only a tax-hiker, you're a liar and we can't believe anything you say about anything. So Romney had to come out and say it was a tax and in order to do that, he had to develop a silly explanation that no one believes (but many will try and sell) that what he did in Massachusetts was still a mandate.
What I think Obama oughta do is take a quote out of this article I just linked to. When asked about raising taxes, he oughta point out that few will be paying the amounts and then add…
I can't really explain this any better than Mitt Romney did when they asked him about the tax penalties he instituted in Massachusetts to pay for its very effective health care plan. He said, and I quote, "We said, 'Look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way. Don't be free riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else.'"
And it's starting to look like the G.O.P. strategy will be to try and convince everyone that they'll lose their homes paying for this TAX that goes to pay for health care for illegal aliens. Oh, and about those Death Panels…