Mitt Romney Wins Our GOP Hypocrite Award for Slamming 'Obamacare' While Taking Pride in Romneycare

Mitt Romney

Welcome back to GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is often mentioned as the smart pick for the GOP to run against President Barack Obama in 2012. Yet, often in the same breath, the issue the Republicans are supposed to run against the Democrats in every election from here to kingdom come is Obamacare.

...Or is it Romneycare? Hearing him describe the plan he signed into law when governor, Romneycare is basically Obamacare's little brother. Check out the video we've embedded on the right and you'll see what we mean.

Of course, Romney went into defense mode. First he tried to convince everyone that reforming healthcare on a state level is significantly different than doing so on a national level, a sentiment he seems to contradict in the above video.

Furthermore, Democrats and policy wonks alike are pretty much in agreement that the legislation the president signed earlier this week is based on Romneycare, as you'll observe in this video on the left.

Perhaps sensing that he hadn't gotten away with this first obfuscation attempt, but still looking longingly at the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, Romney came up with another tactic. The icky, Washington insider way in which this whole process came off was way different than how it happened in his lily-white state.

In a piece for National Review Online titled " A Campaign Begins Today," Romney slammed the president's legislation as "an unconscionable abuse of power." (Perhaps the "campaign" he refers to beginning is his own for 2012?) He accused the president of having "unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in either chamber, bribed reluctant members of his own party, paid-off his union backers, scapegoated insurers, and justified his act with patently fraudulent accounting."

Lies aside, to criticize Obama for not reaching out to Republicans on healthcare reform is laughable. If Romney's own party hadn't been so recalcitrant and dishonest about the legislation from day one, none of that back-room deal-making would have been necessary. If Republicans had just admitted the fact that the proposed healthcare reform bill was basically what one of their own had already signed into law, we wouldn't be having this violently divisive debate.

Echoing the name of his new book, Romney offers No Apology for the supposed abuse of power that apparently is Mass-Care. Instead he offers a mass scare, insinuating that the country might just disintegrate because a plan that he personally signed off on is going national. And that's why Mitt is our GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

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This is the fifth GOP Hypocrite Award for Mitt Romney. He also won on May 8, 2009, March 27, 2009, Feb. 8, 2008 and Dec. 15, 2006. You can see a list of all previous nominees here.