The Sharks Are Circling Mitt

by Stuart Shapiro

While most candidates seem reluctant to start their Republican presidential campaigns, that hasn’t stopped potential candidates from beginning to attack each other.  The target of the week is presumptive but vulnerable front-runner Mitt Romney.  The ones dealing it out are Jim DeMint and Mike Huckabee:

Yesterday, it was the news that Jim DeMint won’t support Mitt Romney unless Romney repudiates RomneyCare.

Now it’s Mike Huckabee’s turn. Speaking on Fox early Friday afternoon, the former Arkansas Governor said that RomneyCare is a “real problem for Mitt Romney” and that the reform plan is Romney’s “Achilles’ heel.”

Huckabee said he was advising Romney to repudiate his health care plan “because it is the model for ObamaCare, and now we have it 50 states, and not one.” Romney, however, is standing by his plan, saying he’s got no apologies for signing it into law despite its similarities to President Obama’s health carer reform plan.

And this is just the start.  Expect the abuse of “RomneyCare” to keep up for the next year.  In the end, Romney will either repudiate the only noteworthy public accomplishment he’s ever had, lose the nomination, or emerge as such a weak nominee that the GOP will be longing for the days of John McCain.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.