If you watched the CNBC GOP debate probably what you'll hear and read from the MSM is that Rick Perry was the big loser because he looked dazed and confused again on stage with his presidential or VP chances going up in smoke as he blanked out for a stunningly long time. It was so bad that the other candidates tried to give him clues, but he was lost and couldn't recover. But since he had already fallen below Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul in the polls, his campaign was over before tonight anyway.
No, the real loser was Mitt Romney. Mittens, you say? What everyone was saying was that he gained more confidence and appeared to be the true frontrunner after last night. Well, I beg to differ. The GOP field did their usual Obama health care bashing and Romney acted like all the others when he said we have to get the government out of our health care. John Harwood of CNBC wasn't going to let that one pass and he caught Romney on maybe his biggest problem facing his election chances in the general after he eventually wins the GOP nomination. It's called RomneyCare.
Romney: And what's wrong with our health care system in America is that government is playing too heavy a role. We need to get our markets to work by having the consumer, the patient have a stake in what the cost and quality is of health care, give them the transparency they need to know where the opportunities are for lower cost and better quality, to make sure that the providers offer them the broadest array of options that they could have. And once we have that happening, you'll see us -- 18 percent of our GDP is spent on health care. The next highest nation in the world is 12 percent. It's a huge difference. We have to get the market...
BARTIROMO: Time.
ROMNEY: ... to work to make sure that we get the kind of quality and value that America deserves.
He thinks he escaped, but alas he was wrong.
HARWOOD: But, Governor, let me ask you about health care, because Congressman Paul said, put it back to the doctor and the patient. You said a few moments ago that you thought states should have the responsibility for insuring the uninsured. And, of course, in Massachusetts, you enacted an individual mandate and subsidies to have people who didn't have insurance get it. So you think there's a pretty large role for government in this area.
(Here's where Romney falls apart and mumbles)
ROMNEY: Well, I think that people -- that people have a responsibility to receive their own care, and the doctor-patient relationship is, of course, where that -- where that exists -- where that exists.
HARWOOD: But the government has the responsibility to force them?
[Gotcha! Romney can't complain about government being the problem in health care since he uses subsides to fund people who couldn't afford RomneyCare and then applied a forced mandate on the rest of the state to pay for them.]
ROMNEY: I --
(%^&*()&^&^ uhhhhh, stumble, stumble, mumble, mumble)
I didn't know whether Ron Paul was saying we're going to -- he's going to get rid of Medicaid. I would not get rid of Medicaid. It's a health program for the poor. What I said was I would take the Medicaid dollars that are currently spent by the federal government, return them to the states so that states can craft their own programs to care for their own poor, rather than having the federal government mandate a one-size- fits-all plan in the entire -- entire nation. Obamacare is wrong. I'll repeal it. I'll get it done.
This was the only time in the debate where he was flustered and sounded like the rest of the incoherent candidates we watched all night long. Instead of answering the direct question he talked about Paul's plan. When it's time for the big stage during the general presidential election he'll have a bigger ditch to try and dig himself out of because of his own health care plan that includes forced individual mandates. His patented Doctor Moreau response that MA residents are different than the rest of America is a joke. And he won't have an audience that boos the moderators because they want to ignore sexual harassment's, flip flops, multiple wives, changed religions and cheer on electrocutions for inmates and people dying without health care and boo gay soldiers after serving in war.
Recap: Newt Gingrich continued to play the referee bashing the media and moderators over questions he doesn't feel live up to his quality of intelligence. Bachmann rambled on with prepackaged answers that nobody knows the meaning of. Santorum was there to cling on for some speaking gigs from the Family Values circuit. Ron Paul played the crazy uncle dying to talk about gold and the Fed and John Huntsman remained the only candidate that had a few lucid things to say. In other words, he never had a chance. Oh, and China sucks...
