I would not have thought that any Republican could be worse for Jonathan Chait's emental equilibrium than George W. Bush. But here we are:
Jonathan Chait: Mitt: Policy Details Equal ‘Take It or Leave It’: Earlier this year, Mitt Romney explained to a reporter that he wouldn’t detail any of his major budget proposals because doing so would make people not want to vote for him…. On 60 Minutes last night, he took a more politic line:
It's very much consistent with my experience as a governor which is, if you want to work together with people across the aisle, you lay out your principles and your policy, you work together with them, but you don't hand them a complete document and say, "Here, take this or leave it." Look, leadership is not a take it or leave it thing.
Okay, he doesn’t want to “hand them a complete document and say, ‘Here, take this or leave it.’" How about handing them a complete document and saying, “I am willing to negotiate”? Or how about handing them an incomplete document, but at least one that isn’t premised upon a mathematical impossibility?
A more revealing exchange occurred when 60 Minutes asked Mitt Romney whether the federal government has any responsibility to cover the uninsured. Spoiler — no…. [I]f you lack health insurance, you can’t receive regular medical treatment, but if your illness develops to the point where you are carted off to the emergency room, you will get treatment, though you will also get a bill that may ruin you financially. That is not what Romney used to say about making emergency room care the only medical plan, but it is now Romney’s final answer. He is running to do two specific things: cut income tax rates, which will overwhelmingly benefit the rich, and make sure the 50 million uninsured… do not get access to… non-emergency medical care.
