David Corn points to this video of Mitt Romney effusively praising the late Sen. Ted Kennedy for helping secure federal funding for Massachusetts’ health care reform law at its signing ceremony in 2006, even going so far as to call him a “parent” of reform. It’s “probably not what Romney wants GOP primary voters to have in mind when they enter a polling place or caucus meeting,” but it is a video Democrats will likely point to if Romney is the eventual nominee:
Also recall that Kennedy initially opposed the law’s central tenet — a requirement that everyone purchase health insurance. The mandate originated as a Republican idea and was heavily promoted by Romney as a “conservative solution” that would force people to take “personal responsibility” for the cost of coverage. As Kennedy explained in December 2005, “I’ve never been one for individual mandates in the past, but I do think that the way this has been proposed, in that everybody will do their part, that’s a compromise. I can buy into that.”