Kleinke: Why Obama Is A Conservative’s Dream

J.D. Kleinke of he American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, makes the case, that “the architecture of the Affordable Care Act is based on conservative, not liberal, ideas about individual responsibility and the power of market forces.” The idea is to even out the a marketplace where young, healthy people subsidize older, sicker folks, which has caused many to opt out, gambling with their health. This is why insurance companies like it–it expands the marketplace

The rationalization and extension of the current market is financed by the other linchpin of the law: the mandate that we all carry health insurance, an idea forged not by liberal social engineers at the Brookings Institution but by conservative economists at the Heritage Foundation. The individual mandate recognizes that millions of Americans who could buy health insurance choose not to, because it requires trading away today’s wants for tomorrow’s needs. The mandate is about personal responsibility — a hallmark of conservative thought.

Clear away all the demagogy and scare tactics, and Obamacare is, at its core, Romneycare across state lines. But today’s Republicans dare not own anything built on principles of economic conservatism, if it also protects one of the four horsemen of the social conservatives’ apocalypse: coverage for the full spectrum of women’s reproductive health, from birth control to abortion…

The real problem with the health care plan — for Mr. Romney and the Republicans in general — is that political credit for it goes to Mr. Obama. Now, Mr. Romney is in a terrible fix trying to spin his way out of this paradox and tear down something he knows is right — something for which he ought to be taking great political credit of his own.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.