Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney earned Kentucky Kudos on Monday with a good teacher pay plan.
Today, he gets the opposite for his compulsory health insurance plan and another very dubious political move.
Supporters point to requirements for drivers to carry car insurance, but that is a weak analogy. The government doesn't spend taxpayer dollars buying car insurance for low-income people. The law requires them to stay off the road and offenders face jail time if they drive without insurance. Romney's socialized medicine deal expands the entitlement mentality further up the income scale. Some people complain about pay increases putting them into higher tax brackets, but that is only a marginal increase. Under Romney's plan, upwardly mobile workers would find increasing incomes causing a tangible loss to their government health insurance subsidy.
Do we really want entitlement disincentives to plague the middle class just as the old "War on Poverty" has crushed the poor for decades? I suppose if we really wanted to follow this track we could provide government car insurance and subsidies for car purchases and sliding-scale prices for gasoline and car repairs based on income. Hey, where's my leather seat subsidy?!
Anyway, as 2008 draws ever closer, national Republicans wanting to keep the GOP in the White House face the same problem as Kentucky Democrats who want their party to regain the Governor's Mansion. No candidate.
