Editorial Says Romney’s Supreme Court Reaction Threatens His Chances - East Idaho News
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Editorial Says Romney’s Supreme Court Reaction Threatens His Chances

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Getty 090611 MittRomney?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1341497021739Ethan Miller/Getty Images(WOLFEBORO N.H.) — A scathing Wall Street Journal editorial Thursday morning said the Romney campaign’s — and now Romney’s — comments on the Supreme Court health decision will be considered a “a turning point” if the presumptive GOP nominee loses to President Obama this fall.

The editorial says that the candidate’s initial decision to “absolve President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class,” delivered by his senior adviser, might lead to the former Massachusetts’ governor’s “second political defeat” and that a subsequent interview on Wednesday left the campaign looking “confused in addition to being politically dumb.”

[CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL EDITORIAL]

Romney retreated from his adviser’s comment and told CBS News on Wednesday that the individual mandate is indeed a tax because that’s what the Supreme Court decided.

“The dissent lost.  It’s in the minority.  And so now the Supreme Court has spoken, and while I agreed with the dissent, that’s taken over by the fact that a majority of the court said it’s a tax, and therefore it’s a tax.  They have spoken,” Romney said in the interview.  “There’s no way around that.  You can try and say you wish they had decided a different way, but they didn’t.  They concluded it was a tax.  That’s what it is.”

Romney’s remarks on the tax contradicted those of his senior adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, who earlier this week had said that Romney “disagrees with the court’s ruling that the mandate was a tax.”  The discrepancy lead the editorial to refer to the Romney campaign’s reaction to the ruling as a “lame jujitsu spin.”

The “unforced error,” the Journal writes, was a result of Romney’s “fear of being labeled a flip-flopper.”

“Mr. Romney favored the individual mandate as part of his reform in Massachusetts, and as we’ve said from the beginning of his candidacy his failure to admit that mistake makes him less able to carry the anti-ObamaCare case to voters,” the editorial reads.  “This latest mistake is of a piece with the campaign’s insular staff and strategy that are slowly squandering an historic opportunity.  Mr. Obama is being hurt by an economic recovery that is weakening for the third time in three years.  But Mr. Romney hasn’t been able to take advantage, and if anything he is losing ground.”

The editorial advises Romney that if his campaign does not respond to the Obama campaign’s attacks on the candidate’s offshore accounts and allegations that he was an “outsourcer” during his time at private equity firm Bain Capital, that they should be “fired for malpractice.”

It concludes, “Mr. Romney promised Republicans he was the best man to make the case against President Obama, whom they desperately want to defeat.  So far Mr. Romney is letting them down.”

The Romney campaign has yet to respond to Thursday’s editorial.

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