Has Mitt Romney's history tied him to Healthcare?

[ Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s signature achievement from his Beacon Hill (Mass.)  tenure has become something he’s now defending rather than touting. ]

A lot of people don’t know the fact that Massachusetts under Romney’s governorship had a comprehensive healthcare program put into place…..While Romeny was Governor the program was trend setting…..Now Romeny has come out forcefully against the just passed Federal Healthcare Bill……Hummmmm?

In the days immediately before and after passage of the landmark health care reform bill, Mitt Romney responded so forcefully as to suggest his own political fate is tied to the new law.

It may well be.

Just as health care, or “Obamacare,” as it is derided on the right, hangs over this year’s midterm elections, it is already casting a shadow on the 2012 presidential contest — and its GOP front-runner. What was once thought to be an asset for Romney, his passage as Massachusetts governor of a health care mandate for the state’s residents, now poses a potentially serious threat to his White House hopes.

The prospect of a larger government role in health care has become so toxic among conservatives that Romney’s principal calling card from his Beacon Hill tenure has become something he’s now defending rather than touting.

While the first primary contest of the presidential race is still just under two years away, and Romney hasn’t officially made his intentions known, the quandary has already become reminiscent of the predicament then-Sen. Hillary Clinton grappled with in the run-up to the 2008 race.

Having supported the 2002 congressional resolution that the Democratic Party’s base viewed as giving President Bush a free hand to invade Iraq, Clinton and her top advisers spent years debating how to address what became a definitional issue in the primary.

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