Romney used to support the individual mandate to buy health insurance. This Democratic National Committee ad lays out some video clips about it, some of which are cherry-picked, but the overall discussion and the part about Wyden-Bennett are spot-on:
Glenn Kessler has a disingenuous dismissal of the ad. In particular he claims that when Romney was referring to "we" Republicans as supporting Wyden-Bennett, Romney didn't include himself in that "we" and that Romney was not endorsing the mandate. Read the full language at Kessler's post, but it seems to me that "we" is easily understood by non-Kesslers. More tellingly, Kessler daintily omits the context and fails to quote the language in the USA Today Op-Ed by Romney supporting a tax penalty for those who don't buy insurance, which is the functional equivalent of a mandate.
Kessler actually uncovered a nugget that was real news, though, even if he failed to recognize it. Romney said this:
I would not mandate at the federal level that every state do what we do, but what I would say at the federal level is we’ll keep giving you these special payments we make if you adopt plans that get everybody insured.While this language doesn't support the DNC's argument about a mandate, it's the same type of argument that conservatives are litigating against in Obamacare. They say the withholding of Medicaid payments unless states expand the program is illegal control of the state governments by the federal government, and that's exactly what Romney wanted to do with the mandate program - require states to impose mandates or lose their funding. While this argument isn't expected to do very well, the Supreme Court decided to consider it.
Romney's piled up a record that he'll have to run against if he becomes the Republican nominee.
