Far be it from me to get in the middle of a Republican fight, but what has transpired since Mitt Romney’s visit a week ago to Ohio is worth a thought or two.
You may recall the candidate for the Republican presidential nomination made a campaign stop at a call center set up to promote state Issues 2 and 3. A reporter asked him about the issues — Issue 2, to repeal Senate Bill 5, the collective bargaining law, and Issue 3, to amend the Ohio Constitution to prohibit any rule or law by a federal, state or local government that would require anybody or employer in Ohio to participate in a health-care system, private or public.
Romney started by stating the obvious, that these decisions are best left to Ohioans. Then he gave what I consider an eminently sensible reason for that observation: “I am not terribly familiar with the two ballot initiatives. …” he said.
An honest confession, one that a responsible person (and Romney is a responsible person, I imagine) would make if asked to comment on something about which he knew little. To pretend otherwise, to swoosh down into a state and take sides with precious little appreciation of local complexities, is to be arrogant. When an Al Sharpton, for example, does something like that, folks don’t hesitate to tell him to butt out.
But Romney wasn’t done explaining, unfortunately. He continued, “But I am certainly supportive of the Republican Party’s efforts here.”
Now that was equivocation of the first order. It is the kind of two-sided speaking that provokes a gentlemanly Jon Huntsman, a fellow presidential aspirant, to declare Romney “a highly lubricated weathervane,” the kind of verbal footworks that causes the arbiters of conservatism, such as the Washington Post columnist George Will, to rake him up one side and down the other. If the former governor of Massachussetts wasn’t familiar with the initiatives — as he’d said just a half-second before — on what basis was he declaring support for the party’s efforts in Ohio?
Of course, no one has more reason than Romney to hedge on Issue 3. His comrades in the party no longer care for the conservative-inspired individual mandate in “RomneyCare” any more than they do for the White House version in the Affordable Care Act. Silence on Issue 3, thus, is infinitely more preferable for Romney than the choice he confronts at the moment: To defy his party’s orthodoxy or to stomp on his baby and throw it over the cliff (or under the bus) because the party would be satisfied with nothing less.
Frankly, under the bus wouldn’t be a bad place to shove the constitutional amendment. Issue 3 promises to create mischief down the road in Ohio health care if it passes. State Republicans managed to galvanize Democratic and union opposition by poking them with a live wire, S.B 5. It was clear soon enough that the intense opposition could drive Election Day traffic the Democrats’ way with a referendum on the collective bargaining bill. What better counterweight than to double down with a ballot initiative drawing on widespread hostility to the “government takeover of health care” and fears about loss of individual “freedoms”?
Issue 3 goes after the federal health-law, supposedly to protect Ohioans from being compelled directly or indirectly to buy or sell health care or health insurance or to be penalized for it. Look at the website YesforJobs.com, which is promoting Issues 2 and 3 under the banner of the tea party organization FreedomWorks, and it contends that a “yes” vote on Issue 3 “will outlaw ObamaCare’s individual mandate in Ohio.”
No, it won’t. Not without the say-so of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The attorneys general of Ohio and 25 other states, as well as the Obama White House, have asked the court to rule on whether the individual mandate passes constitutional muster. Ohio would be rid of the mandate, anyway, if the high court strikes down the federal law (which it may).
But if the court upholds the federal health reform (which it may), Ohio would not only not be rid of the mandate, but it also would have in its constitution a law that forbids the state and local governments, directly or indirectly, from imposing requirements for health care and coverage on individuals and employers. Issue 3 would apply to laws on the books since March 20, 2010, when the federal law was enacted.
The potential for mischief is real. Let’s say new infectious diseases that threaten the public emerge, as they occasionally do, might Ohio need an another constitutional amendment to require immunization for hospital, school or restaurant workers staff, for instance? His critics are welcome to make mincemeat of Romney, but his initial instinct was right not to leap on cue to support Issue 3.
Ofobike is Beacon Journal chief editorial writer. She can be reached at 330-996-3513 or by email at lofobike@thebeaconjournal.com
