It is Utter Folly to Trust Romney

A reader writes:

I have been following your discussion of Romney, the HHS Mandate, and Dale Price with interest, and have another tidbit to offer against Romney. You may already know this but Romney’s shenanigans in MA go beyond forcing Catholic hospitals to dispense the morning after pill, even if only “just a little” further. Romneycare itself actually mandates insurance coverage of contraception in a manner similar (but not identical) to the HHS mandate in Obamacare.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures:

Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 175 § 47W, ch. 176A § 8W, ch. 176B § 4W, and ch. 176G § 4O(2002) require insurers that provide benefits for outpatient services to also provide hormone replacement therapy for menopausal women and outpatient FDA-approved contraceptive services under the same terms and conditions as for other outpatient services. The law defines outpatient contraceptive services. This law excludes policies purchased by an employer that is a church or a qualified church-controlled organization. (2002 Mass. Acts, Chap. 49; SB 2139).

Romneycare (2006) then mandated that pretty much everyone in Massachusetts obtain a state-government-regulated minimum level of healthcare insurance coverage, including the above. So while Romney didn’t sign the 2002 law requiring all health insurance in MA to cover birth control candy (and many other states have similar laws), he signed the 2006 law requiring everyone in MA to purchase that same insurance. Of course, the exception is a little bigger than Obamacare’s, since it exempts church controlled organizations that don’t serve only their own religious. But it doesn’t exempt Joe the Catholic Machine Shop Worker With 15 Employees or Sally the Catholic Individual Insurance Purchaser. It may be splitting hairs but your everyday MA resident got his religious liberty violated in 2006 as much as the rest of us will under Obamacare. And that’s the guy we’re supposed to trust to repeal the HHS mandate.

As an aside, I certainly respect the idea of voting for Romney for the reasons suggested by Price. But I just can’t do it.

Yup.  The reason I respect Dale’s case for voting for Romney is that he makes it without any BS about Romney being a good man, or reliable, or trustworthy, or interested in abortion, the HHS Mandate, gay marriage or anything else beyond his principle-free will to power that is, at heart, a total moral void.  Dale simply is rolling the dice and guessing that, nearly by accident, Romney’s particular set of political allegiances is slightly more likely to cause him to–one hopes–do slightly less damage than the current occupant of the White House.  It’s a respectable position, I reckon, because Dale does not disgrace himself by telling the massive passel of lies that so much pro-Romney stuff has consisted of in the desperate attempt to make this vote anything other than holding one’s nose and muscling down a dungburger because that’s what the GOP, in its utter cynical contempt for prolifers, has forced on us.  Dale recognizes very clearly that this is a hostage situation and does not pretend that Romney is anything other than the cynical duplicitous liar he is.  He simply takes the long shot chance that his cynical duplicitous lies will be slightly less damaging than Obama’s cynical duplicitous lies.  I totally respect that.

I just don’t think the game is worth the candle and so will be voting for somebody I actually want.  And, I suspect, after Romney is elected and commits his many many betrayals, Dale and many more will be joining me in 2016–because Dale is a good and honest man and I think his patience, which is greater than mine because he is a better man than me, is just about gone with the Thing that Used to Be Conservatism.

Let us all pray for each other.  We are going to need to stick together in the storms that are coming as America continues its transformation into a post-Christian and anti-Catholic soft police state.