Santorum Campaign Press Release - Ohio Voters In All 88 Counties Rejected Romney's Individual Mandate

...In his op-ed, Romney seems to encourage President Obama to move in a slower and more bipartisan manner, to abandon his planned government-run "public option" (which, under constituent pressure, the Democrats eventually did scrap), to use Romney's Massachusetts health care overhaul as something of a model, and (as a way to keep Obamacare's costs down) to include a federal mandate...

... Roughly eight months later, in the immediate aftermath of Obamacare's passage, Romney called for repealing "the worst aspects of Obamacare," saying that he hoped we could ultimately "repeal the bad and keep the good." When comparing his Massachusetts health care overhaul with Obamacare at that time, Romney said, "I like some of the similarities."

The problem for Romney, both with his apparent prior support for a federal mandate and his ongoing defense of state-based mandates, is that Ohio voters recently rejected all such mandates in rather emphatic fashion. Just four months ago, Buckeye State voters supported a ballot measure that said, in part, "In Ohio, no law or rule shall compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in a health care system." Even though the vote was among all Ohio voters and not merely those who will be voting in the upcoming Republican primary, the measure passed by a whopping 32 percentage points (66 to 34 percent), won in all 88 of Ohio's counties, and won in 81 of those counties by margins of at least 20 points.