For about two years now, the issue of Mitt Romney's health care reform law in Massachusetts has been an elephant in the Republican Party's room. There was even some speculation early on that the GOP's right-wing base would force the former governor to repudiate his only meaningful accomplishment in public office.
That obviously didn't happen, and as it turns out, it didn't matter -- since Romney ran against such weak competition, he managed to get the Republican presidential nomination despite having created the blueprint for President Obama's Affordable Care Act.
But the elephant never really went away. Yesterday, Romney's chief spokesperson, Andrea Saul, gave the right a heart attack when she suggested on Fox News that struggling families nationwide would benefit greatly if only they lived under Romneycare at the national level -- implicitly endorsing the implementation of Obamacare.
All of a sudden, conservatives are starting to point at the elephant in the room all over again. The Republican National Committee held a conference call with Rick Santorum today, and when Saul's comments came up, he laughed inappropriately.
Santorum, you'll recall, said Romney was the worst Republican in the country to run against Obama precisely because he has no credibility on health care.
Also this morning, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a co-chair of the Women for Mitt coalition and a campaign surrogate, was asked on CNN to talk about Romney's health care law in Massachusetts, and Blackburn simply refused to answer the questions. She told a couple of lies about the Affordable Care Act and ignored all other questions.
This isn't going away. Several leading right-wing voices are livid and both Romney and his campaign team no longer have any idea what to say about the subject.
Maybe Republicans should have had this conversation during the primaries, instead of 89 days before the election?