Romney Spokes Person Refutes Attack Ad By Saying the Problems Cited Would Not Have Occurred If the Obama Health Care Plan Had Been in Effect

No, It does Not Get Any Weirder Than This

If the subject of the ad by a pro-Obama group were not so tragic, this story would be the height of hilarity in the campaign so far.  In fact, it will be difficult for either side to top this in terms of irony and hypocrisy.

The issue is an ad that charged that after Bain Capital purchased a company, it ultimately shut down and a worker and his family lost their health insurance.

The ad by Priorities USA Action, a super PAC supporting Obama, features Joe Soptic, a steelworker from Indiana who was laid off from a plant owned by Romney-founded Bain Capital, discussing his wife’s cancer and eventual death. Soptic said his family lost health insurance after he was laid off.

Now even this Forum agrees that this is pretty aggressive stuff, and that it is probably beyond the limits of acceptability to charge or even imply that Mitt Romney actively worked to cause a death by cancer, or even that his actions or the actions of Bain Capital were the cause.  But the real story is the response of the Romney team, like this.

Ms. Saul - Soon to be Ex-Romney Spokesperson

A Mitt Romney spokesperson offered an unusual counterattack Wednesday to an ad in which a laid-off steelworker blames the presumptive GOP nominee for his family losing health care: If that family had lived in Massachusetts, it would have been covered by the former governor’s universal health care law.

“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care,” Andrea Saul, Romney’s campaign press secretary, said during an appearance on Fox News. “There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President [Barack] Obama’s economy.”

That’s right, Mr. Romney’s campaign says their defense is that in Massachusetts this would not have happened, because Mitt Romney provided for health care for everyone.  This is absolutely stunning.

Bill Burton, a strategist for Priorities USA, said he’s as “stunned as anyone that [Saul] would invoke Romney’s support for individual mandates, particularly in a state that wasn’t Massachusetts.”

So what Ms. Saul is saying here is that if the Obama health care programs, which Mr. Romney vehemently opposes,  had been in effect this problem of losing health care insurance would not have happened.  About the only thing this Forum can add is that it is true, as Ms. Saul states, that there are currently people losing their jobs in today’s economy, and that it is very likely Ms. Saul will experience the reality of that real soon.