Albert Einstein has been cited for saying that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. You may have decided to vote for Mitt Romney because you dislike the policies of Barack Obama, but don't expect a different outcome.
Case in point: does anyone really believe that on Day One President Mitt Romney would act to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or "Obamacare" as he claimed?
I remind you that it is the same Mitt Romney who authored "Romneycare" in Massachusetts, the model for Obamacare, and, like Obama, promoted the individual mandate and coercive tax penalties as recently as July 2009.
"First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages 'free riders' to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others."
According to Michael F. Cannon, Mitt Romney has appointed former Utah governor Mike Leavitt to head his presidential transition team. Leavitt's consulting firm has earned considerable amounts of Obamacare cash by explaining how states would benefit through establishing health insurance "exchanges" and has said positive things about elements of Obama's health reform law. Leavitt may be Romney's chief of staff, if he wins.
If you wonder whether or not the government can efficiently and effectively run a national healthcare system as endorsed by Obama and Romney, look no further than the U.S. Postal Service.
Romneycare increased the demand for health care but did nothing to expand supply. By cracking down on insurance premiums, Massachusetts pushed insurers to reduce their payments to providers, making it less worthwhile for doctors to expand their practices. As a result, the average wait to get an appointment with a doctor grew from 33 days to over 55 days.
Ironically, Obamacare will encourage a reduction in demand. Even though you will have to pay for life-saving drugs, life-ending drugs are free.
The fact is that both Romneycare and Obamacare are unlawful, but the Republicans are no more interested in upholding the Constitution than the Democrats.
Does anyone really believe that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, made a legal decision on ObamaCare and not a political one?
In that regard, the article "Supreme Court Obamacare Decision a Head-Scratcher" by Marc Gindin makes interesting reading.
According to Gindin, if the individual mandate is a tax and not a penalty as stated by Chief Justice Roberts, then the Supreme Court cannot by law hear the Obamacare case, let alone rule on it.
The Tax Anti-Injunction Act, passed in 1867 and reaffirmed decades later, bars legal challenges regarding taxes that take effect in the future. If Obamacare concerned taxes, legal precedent should have prevented this case from even being heard. For the arguments to proceed, the Court needed to accept that the issue was not about taxes, as claimed even now by the Obama Administration.
So, there is the conundrum. Chief Justice Roberts declared that the individual mandate, if defined as the regulation of commercial inactivity through penalties is not constitutional, but through taxes it is. If, in fact, it is a tax, then the Supreme Court had no authority to hear the case until 2014 when those taxes are implemented.
Furthermore, the Roberts' decision eviscerates all the personal liberties guaranteed under the Constitution. As Gindin correctly notes, Congress, through the General Welfare clause, can compel individuals to buy gym memberships, electric cars, bananas, fax machines or whatever by imposing a tax for non-compliance.
Does anyone really believe that, once granted the power to regulate people's lives to that extent, the Republicans would be any less inclined than the Democrats to embrace that power?
Based on their amply-displayed lack of courage during the Obama Administration, does anyone really believe that the Republicans deserve one "last" chance to prove that they will support and defend the Constitution and not display their traditional timidity to oppose additional attempts by the Democrats to flout the rule of law or limit personal freedom?
If you do, then here is a club to beat yourself because you are a masochist, a person who achieves pleasure through self-denial, self-delusion and submissiveness, one who is gratified by the pain and degradation inflicted by politicians.
Or maybe you are just insane.
Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of "Afghanistan and the Culture of Military Leadership". He receives email at lawrence.sellin@gmail.com