The National Review has not explicitly contradicted itself on health care, but there is a glaring inconsistency between how it talks about health care reform, depending upon whom is in power. As I mentioned below, when National Review endorsed Mitt Romney in 2007, the fact that he had backed a government overhaul of health care in Massachusetts did not seem to bother the editors. Here is how they talk about the issue in 2007:
His conservative accomplishments as governor showed that he can work with, and resist, a Democratic legislature. He knows that not every feature of the health-care plan he enacted in Massachusetts should be replicated nationally, but he can also speak with more authority than any of the other Republican candidates about this pressing issue.
And here is just a sample of the typical way National Review now talks about health care reform under Obama in a not-so-subtly titled article, ‘Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Obamacare’:
At its core, what Obamacare really means is a loss of freedom. …
The motivation is to replace millions of private choices with a command-and-control model in which health-care decisions and health-care resources are centrally administered and allocated by the federal government — under the ultimate command, at least initially, of Barack Obama. The motivation is simple and can be reduced to one word: power. And it doubtless has the American Founders, who dedicated their lives to securing liberty, spinning in their graves.
Both plans increased costs, reduced freedom, and resulted in higher taxes (click here and here for more). And yet, there is a striking disparity in how National Review talks about them. The difference of course is that one was enacted under a Republican administration and the other is being advocated by a Democrat. It just goes to show how conservatives lost their critical distance from political power. For the record, I oppose both health care reform plans—and I wish National Review conservatives would too.
hello…this is why we have federalism. Mass may be very liberal but people who choose to live there know par for the course. Some laws innapropriate for the whole country are less problematic at a state level.
That’s not much of an argument. Just because the Romney plan wasn’t imposed on the whole country doesn’t make it OK. Shouldn’t conservatives also oppose socialism on a state level?
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