Mitt Romney on Corporations, Defending RomneyCare and Federalism

Mitt Romney made a quick detour into Iowa for the August 11th debate, had an encounter with a heckler or two and then went back on the campaign trail to somewhere else that wasn't Ames. Romney declared corporations are people, just like the Supreme Court previously did, in an exchange with a local leftist and for an hour, many on the left thought they had their gotcha moment, but instead it was a tempest in teapot. Let's face it, what is a corporation but a volunteer gathering of humans with the idea of making a profit, even though some like Citizen United are formed to keep undesirable Democrats from being elected.

Andrew McCarthy of National Review noted that Romney may have strengthened the case for federalism. Romney's major problem with many Republicans has been Romney care which has not been proven a great success and has included many elements of Obamacare. Romney is in a sticky situation since he has to defend his health care plan while promising to repeal Obamacare. His solution is to simply declare it a state option if a state wants you to buy insurance within their borders, provided that they keep it to themselves. McCarthy wrote, “The federal government has a few discrete areas of national concern to regulate. The rest belong to the states and the people to regulate, or not, as they see fit. In a free society, that means decisions on most matters of community life get made by the community that has to live with them — and pay for them. In a pluralistic society, that means we could have 50 different ways of doing things — meaning that if you find yourself in a state that is foolish enough to mandate the purchase of health insurance subsidized by taxes or penalties, you are free to move to some state that isn’t.”

This doesn’t mean that Romney bleeds 10th Amendment red but as McCarthy noted, if Romney gets a handle on federalism as a concept, he may change the nature of the Republican Party. Since his major competitor will be Rick Perry, Mr. State's Right himself, a campaign on Federalism is something Romney needs to do.