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Mitt Romney hired Mike Leavitt to head a White House transition team, and at first blush, this doesn't seem especially controversial. Leavitt is the former governor of Utah and led HHS during the Bush administration, and by all appearances, seems like a competent choice.
If anything, it seemed possible this might lead to questions about Romney being presumptuous -- around this time four years ago, Barack Obama caught all kinds of hell for picking a transition team, even though it's been a standard move for major-party nominees for decades.
But as Sahil Kapur noted, the Leavitt pick is causing a stir today for a very different reason.
Mitt Romney is under fire from conservatives for selecting a man to run his White House transition team who has championed a key element of "Obamacare" and benefited financially from the law -- and the Romney campaign is already working to ease the right's concerns.
[Leavitt] runs the health care consulting firm Leavitt Partners, which advises states on how to set up the insurance market exchanges in the signature Affordable Care Act.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Leavitt "strenuously backed the core piece of President Barack Obama's health-care law and urged the states to move forward together in adopting health insurance exchanges." And his stance hasn't changed: "We believe that the exchanges are the solution to small business insurance market and that's gotten us sideways with some conservatives," Leavitt's top aide Rich McKeown told Politico.
The Cato Institute is outraged, as is Erik Erickson. Conservative media outlets -- including the Washington Examiner and National Review -- aren't pleased either.
As uproars go, possible transitions teams are practically the definition of inside baseball, but the fact that so many on the right are responding so aggressively to Leavitt lets us know a few things.
First, if Leavitt was in line for a top post in a Romney administration -- say, White House chief of staff, for example -- the Republican base has made it clear they don't much care for him.
Second, if Romney intended to keep popular parts of the Affordable Care Act in place, the base appears to be signaling that won't work, either.
And finally, supporting health care exchanges is hardly liberal. We're talking about private insurers competing in a health care marketplace -- an idea conservatives have traditionally supported. That Leavitt has championed exchanges doesn't -- or at least, shouldn't -- position him as an underhanded enemy of the GOP cause.
Nevertheless, the Romney campaign is trying to put out this fire quickly, telling the right this morning that Leavitt's role does not signal any tolerance for "Obamacare."
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Every time we use "the base" to describe the fascist core of the Republican Party, I remind myself that, in Arabic, "the base" is...
Al Qaeda
At its heart this is an issue of unbridled capitalism. If one were to take Willard Romney and his Republican supporters seriously, the Holy scripture would need to be revised to read, “In the beginning God created the heavens, the earth and the markets.” Genesis 1:1.1
We constantly hear, “The Markets Know Best,” and “Let the Markets Work it Out.” The markets are greedy people who have only one interest, making unlimited profits for them self. That may seem harsh, but it is entirely accurate. They have a secondary interest in making money for their investors, and everyone else can fend for them self. They have absolutely no commitment whatsoever to the United States of America or its citizens. None. They see themselves as extra-national.
What the markets know best is how to make millions and billions of dollars for a small number of people, in whatever country they may reside or hide their money from taxes. What the markets “work out,” is how to make the most profit at others’ expense. The John Roberts’ Court lost its legitimacy as a judicial arbiter with the Citizens United Ruling, which is American Capitalism run amuck, reaching down into every so-called democratic election in the country. Capitalism as an economic system must be regulated to prevent its becoming even more of what Thomas Jefferson had warned. The health care arguments are about whether the most basic services to American services to its citizens should be driven by profit to a small number of people.
Jefferson was well aware of the risks of unbridled capitalism of the sort that exists today, “The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the War, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous - and it doesn't deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.” Memoirs of Thomas Jefferson (1821).
What we see in the health care debate is what happens when Republicans throw their core principles out for sake of the convenience of the base. Romneycare and Obamacare are quintessentially Republican programs. Repulicans make a lot of money supporting them. That the Republican party has run so far away from its traditional values demonstrates just how much the DC leadership values power over policy.
Mike Leavitt is the first real job creator the Romney campaign has tapped. Irony is dead.
Mike Leavitt? Please: Hire a pro, someone with the experience to handle this sort of task. Like Dick Cheney. . .
This is a bit off-topic, but just the fact that the GOP isn't called out as being beyond redemption for being rabid at the thought that Americans will no longer be abused and hounded to their deaths by insurance companies, and that we'll have access to the same insurance as any Tea Party freshman -- is really sickening. Every rank-and-file Republican that snipes about the Affordable Care Act will benefit from it at some time in their lives - either directly, or through health situations that occur within their families. It is an ode to the Republican science of propaganda that they have been able to convince the "average Joe" that what he needs most in life is to be used by insurance companies for a kick-ball.
Aren't some of the same politicians that are "bashing" the Affordable Care Act benefiting from it - as in their over 21 year olds are still able to receive care until they're 26?!? Just asking. Remember that old age about a "glass house and throwing stones?
The other thing this shows is that no matter that the truly rabid right may be a minority not only in the country but even among Republicans, they will not be sated until they are given 100% control of every appointment, every position, every stance (except perhaps the wide ones), and every action whether legislative, executive, administrative or even judicial.
It also shows "traditional" Republicans are so cowardly that they just might allow the rabid minority what it wants.
Yes, the way I heard the GOP's problem regarding healthcare reform is it's like the dog that finally caught the car...and we all know how that can turn out.
Naturally, the uber rich who are against the AFA don't care because they can pay for everything out of pocket. The interesting thing will be all those not-so-rich who find out after they're not insultated by group insurance plans how many of them have pre-existing conditions which exclude them from coverage or that their lauded health savings account with 10K in it will barely get them through an ER visit.
Healthcare is being and will forever be rationed. The best, state-of-the-art health care, like most of the best things in life, will be reserved for those who can afford it. And the less affluent legions cheering for the demise of Obamacare will come to know that sooner or later.