Critics missed brilliance of Romney’s

day-one Obamacare promise

Did former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney walk into a political ambush? Or did he charge a hill he had to take, even though he took some wounds getting there?The once and future Republican presidential aspirant delivered a talk and PowerPoint presentation on Thursday that both defended the course he took on health care reform as governor of the very liberal Bay State and laid out a bold solution to the pressing disaster of Obamacare.

Because Romney’s political opponents — nested in the Manhattan citadels of conservatism, the Wall Street Journal and National Review — spent all their Spanish Inquisition-like fury demanding a recanting that Romney wouldn’t give, they missed the brilliant idea at the center of the talk.

Romney pledged that on the first day of his presidency, he will issue waivers from Obamacare’s mandates and rules to all 50 states. This death by a thousand waivers will work immediately as formal repeal wends it way through the Congress.

Indeed, the autopen for Romney signatures on waiver applications from businesses as well as states can run round the clock if need be. Democrats will not be able to object as President Obama invented the waiver-as-favor policy.

The Romney “repeal by waiver” strategy makes perfect political and economic sense.

So much sense, in fact, that the other top GOP candidates ought to take a “Romney Waiver” pledge, committing to the very same course of action on day one of their presidency and thus establishing the first crystal-clear delineation between Obama and the GOP nominee, one that voters can grasp, internalize and act on.

The waiver policy was thus a great bit of politics. What about the defense of Massachusetts’ health reform?

Romney stood by the work of his governorship as the best that could be done in that state at that time. He defended the individual mandate in the Bay State as a prudent, useful and constitutional experiment, one of many that ought to be undertaken in the states.

He of course denounced the overreach of Obamacare and laid out the many and key differences between his reform package and Obamacare’s vast power grab.

Critics scoffed at these distinctions, which is to scoff at, among other things, the U.S. Constitution. The critics warned that the Tea Party activists will have none of it.

Having spoken to Tea Party gatherings and attended their conventions, I suspect that the Beltway-Manhattan media elite may be less than fully informed on what the Tea Party will and will not accept from Romney on the subject, but time will tell.

That Obamacare raised taxes and the Massachusetts law didn’t may be of interest to these voters, too.

What Romney has undeniably done is guarantee that Obamacare will be front and center through the GOP primary campaign, even as most of the discussion will be spent on the solutions offered to the fiscal crisis.

If Romney is the nominee, and he remains the favorite at this point, the president will be debating a GOP nominee who quite clearly occupies the center of the political spectrum on health care reform, even as Romney assails Obama’s fecklessness on economic policy and rudderlessness abroad.

Critics are confident that Romney’s record on health care sinks his candidacy. I was confident in 2007 that John McCain’s record on immigration, campaign finance reform, opposition to the Bush tax cuts and his Gang of 14 gambit on federal judicial nominations precluded his getting the nomination.

Voters weigh it all and then look forward: Who can win? Who can get Obama started on a long retirement and begin to fix the damage he will leave behind? Those are the questions that will decide the GOP nominee.

Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.