Mitt Romney's Lying Problem

From Matt Welch at Reason.com:

In one of his two headline-making tussles with fellow presidential candidates at last night's GOP debate in Las Vegas, frontrunner Mitt Romney bristled at backbencher Rick Santorum's assertion that the former Massachusetts governor had no "credibility" when it comes to repealing the Republican-loathed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because Romney's signature Bay State health care mandate "was the basis for Obamacare."

Romney responded in his usual fashion—by harrumphing, trying to run out the clock, changing the subject, reasserting his bonafides, and lying his face off:

You know, this I think is either our eighth or ninth debate. And each chance I've—I've had to talk about Obamacare, I've made it very clear, and also in my book. And at the time, by the way, I crafted the plan, in the last campaign, I was asked, is this something that you would have the whole nation do? And I said, no, this is something that was crafted for Massachusetts. It would be wrong to adopt this as a nation.

Then came some long and unwatchable crosstalk and whining in reference to the edits of the paperback version of Romney's aptly titled 2010 book No Apology, which replaced the phrase "We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country, and it can be done without letting government take over health care," with "And it was done without government taking over health care." Finally, Romney got another full paragraph in:

And—look—look, we'll let everybody take a look at the fact-checks. I was interviewed by Dan Balz. I was in interviewed in this debate stage with you four years ago. I was asked about the Massachusetts plan, was it something I'd impose on the nation? And the answer is absolutely not.

Here's the problem with Romney's repeated assertion that he never suggested applying Romneycare nationwide: It just isn't true.

At a GOP debate in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 5, 2007, here's what Mitt Romney had to say about his preferred federal approach to health care policy:

Look, it's critical to insure more people in this country. It doesn't make sense to have 45 million people without insurance. It's not good for them because they don't get good preventative care and disease management, just as these folks have spoken about. But it's not good for the rest of the citizens either, because if people aren't insured, they go to the emergency room for their care when they get very sick. That’s expensive. They don't have any insurance to cover it. [...]

We have to have our citizens insured, and we're not going to do that by tax exemptions, because the people that don’t have insurance aren’t paying taxes. What you have to do is what we did in Massachusetts. Is it perfect? No. But we say, let's rely on personal responsibility, help people buy their own private insurance, get our citizens insured, not with a government takeover, not with new taxes needed, but instead with a free-market based system that gets all of our citizens in the system. No more free rides. It works.

Emphasis mine.

There are two main problems with this yawning chasm between Mitt's flip and Romney's flop. The first is that a president who continues to insist, despite the mounds of contrary evidence, that Romneycare is working well, is a president who will be likely to continue or exacerbate bad health care policies at the federal level. The second problem, which worries me more, is that a president who attains office by brazenly flouting the truth is even more likely than your average politician to govern in a dishonest and even illegal way.

More here.