Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Sunday rejected President Barack Obama's recent references to the health care plan his state put into place as the basis for Obamacare, saying the president didn't "learn the lessons" of Massachusetts and, more importantly, didn't learn the lesson to tell the truth. 
 
 “The president failed to learn the lessons that came from the experience in Massachusetts," Romney said on NBC's "Meet the Press," saying a state-by-state approach is better than a "one-size-fits-all" plan. 
 
 “Perhaps the most important lesson the president, I think, failed to learn was, you have to tell the American people the truth. And when he told the American people that you could keep your health insurance if you wanted to keep that plan, period, he said that time and again, he wasn't telling the truth. And I think that fundamental dishonesty has really put in peril the whole foundation of his second term.” 
 
 Appearing almost exactly a year after the 2012 election, the former Republican presidential nominee said regardless of how you evaluate Obamacare, the fact that it was based on a lie shows the president can no longer lead. 
 
 “The fact that the president sold it on a basis that was not true has undermined the foundation of his second term. I think it's rotting it away," Romney said. "We've got to have a president that can lead, and right now he's not able to do so.” 
 
 If the president had been honest from the get-go, Romney suggested the Affordable Care Act wouldn't have passed. 
 
 “Obamacare barely made it through Washington, as you know. And there is no question in my mind but had the president been truthful and told the American people that millions would lose their insurance and millions more would see their premiums skyrocket, had he told them that at the time it was going through Washington, there would have been such a huge cry against it, it would not have passed," Romney said. 
 
 Romney criticized the government shutdown over Obamacare, though, saying the only way to move forward is to for the GOP to take back control of Washington. 
 
 “The shutdown was not the right way to go, in my view, but the right way to replace Obamacare is to elect Republicans to the Senate and the House and, ultimately, the White House and repair Obamacare, replace it, and put in place something that’s going to do a better job,” Romney said. 
 
 Read more about: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Massachusetts, Obamacare ||||| With Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, it seems it's always two steps forward, one step back. Romney won a double-digit victory Tuesday in the Illinois primary, and followed it up with a major endorsement this morning from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. 
 
 
 
 But one of Romney's spokesmen also offered fresh ammunition to GOP critics of the former Massachusetts governor who see him as an inauthentic conservative, by suggesting in a television interview that the candidate would steer toward the political center as soon as he clinches the nomination. 
 
 
 
 Eric Fehrnstrom, speaking on CNN's "Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien," was asked whether the campaign was worried that the positions Romney has taken in the last months would hurt him with moderate voters in the fall. 
 
 
 
 "Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign," Fehrnstrom responded. "Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again." 
 
 
 
 That notion drew this sharp response from Rick Santorum's campaign. 
 
 
 
 "We all knew Mitt Romney didn't have any core convictions, but we appreciate his staff going on national television to affirm that point for anyone who had any doubts," spokesman J. Hogan Gidley said in an emailed statement. "With the two-year anniversary of the signing of ObamaCare upon us, can voters really believe that the man who urged the president to use his healthcare plan in Massachusetts as a model would really repeal ObamaCare? Or is that promise just something they would 'shake up and restart' with when Romney hits the general election?" 
 
 
 
 Santorum has increasingly been making the case that Romney is without a core, someone who the party's base cannot trust. 
 
 
 
 In his remarks Tuesday night, the former Pennsylvania senator said the party "needs someone who's got a strong and clear record that can appeal to voters all across this country." 
 
 
 
 It should be "someone who you can trust, someone that you know when they say they're going to do something, they're not saying it because, well, that happens to be the popular theme of the moment, but someone who has a long track record of deep convictions, someone who's going to go out and stand and fight, because it's not just what the pollster tells them to say or what's on their TelePrompter," he said. 
 
 
 
 Democrats also have circulated Fehrnstrom's remarks. 
 
 Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod tweeted out the video, with the message: "Forget everything you know. Forget everything you've seen. Coming soon. Mitt 5.0!" 
 
 
 
 You can see the full video below. 
 
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 Romney aide's 'Etch-A-Sketch' remark draws Santorum attack [Video] ||||| Mitt Romney is embracing his Massachusetts health care law in response to President Barack Obama’s attacks that Republicans have declared a ‘war on women.’ 
 
 “I’m the guy who was able to get all the health care for all the women and men for my state,” Romney said in an interview aired on 'Fox News Sunday.' “They were talking about it at the federal level. We actually did something and we did it without cutting Medicare and without raising taxes.” 
 
 Romney added that he was “very proud” of his signature on the 2006 law when he was governor of Massachusetts, while charging that Obama would cut more than $700 million from Medicare to pay for the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 The presumptive Republican presidential nominee invoked his work on health care in Massachusetts in response to a question about women's health issues -- a sore spot for Republicans after Missouri GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remarks. President Barack Obama's campaign has been on offense on the Missouri lawmaker's statement for more than a week, but Romney noted that he's also urged Akin to drop out of the race against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). 
 
 “Oh, I think it was a terrible statement on his part,” he said. “I think it was uninformed. I think it was outrageous and offensive." 
 
 “I think I have distanced myself from the kind of thing he said as far as I possibly can," Romney added. "He was wrong. And it’s obviously being used by Democrats to try to cast a shadow on our entire party and it’s not. Leaders of our party have pretty much unanimously said, 'Mr. Akin get out of the race. You’ve said something which is highly offensive.' ” 
 
 Asked if the Obama campaign would be effective in attaching Akin's name to the Romney-Paul Ryan ticket, Romney replied, “It really is sad, isn’t it? With all the issues that America faces, for the Obama campaign to continue to stoop to such a low level. They understand and they are wise enough to understand that people like myself who have asked him to get out of the race because we vehemently disagree with what he said and believe it hurts out party and I think is damaging to women.” 
 
 Read more about: Medicare, Abortion, Todd Akin, Mitt Romeny ||||| The Blog 
 
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 In his book, No Apology, Romney admitted that getting “overall health-care costs for everyone [in Massachusetts] to actually go down…is the task that remains.” However, in response to Santorum’s critique, Romney stood by Romneycare: 
 
 Santorum argued that Romney’s Massachusetts health care overhaul is “pretty much a model for what Obamacare is going to look like: the highest health care costs in the country, 27 percent above the average...[and] 94 percent of the people in Massachusetts are now insured, but there was just a survey that came out and said one in four don’t get the care they need because of the high cost. So, you have a card, you’re covered, but you can’t get care.” 
 
 The exchange over Romneycare and Obamacare began when Santorum responded to a health care question from an audience member. He said, “Governor Romney was the author of Romneycare, which is a top-down government-run health care system which, [I] read [in] an article today, has 15 different items directly in common with Obamacare, everything from the increase in the Medicaid program…to [the] mandate you buy something [as] a condition of breathing, [the] mandate that you buy an insurance policy….” 
 
 More than anyone else during any of the previous Republican presidential debates, Rick Santorum took dead aim tonight at the similarities between Romneycare and Obamacare. Arguing that those similarities could pose great problems for the Republican party and for the prospects for repeal if Mitt Romney were to win the nomination, Santorum implored GOP voters to remember, “We can’t give this issue away in this election.” 
 
 “The system that we put in place in our state was something we worked out with the labor community, the health care community, business, and the citizens of the nation. We came together, it was voted [on] by a 200-person legislature. Only two voted no. 
 
 “Our system has a lot of flaws, a lot of things I'd do differently. It has a lot of benefits. The people of the state like it by about three to one.” 
 
 Romney didn’t mention that the people of that state also voted for Barack Obama by nearly two to one. 
 
 Without having said how Romneycare differs from Obamacare, Romney concluded by saying, “We consider it very different than Obamacare.” He then shifted his focus to Obamacare itself, saying, “If I were president, [on] day one I will take action to repeal Obamacare. It’s bad medicine. It’s bad economy. I’ll repeal it.” 
 
 He added, “I believe the people of each state should be able to craft programs that they feel are best for their people. I think ours is working pretty well.” 
 
 Santorum pounced: 
 
 “What Governor Romney just said is that government-run top-down medicine is working pretty well in Massachusetts, and he supports it. Now, think about what that means — going up against Barack Obama…you are going to claim, well, top-down government-run medicine on the federal level doesn’t work, and we should repeal it. And he’s going to say, wait a minute, Governor. You just said that top-down government-run medicine in Massachusetts works well. 
 
 Santorum added, “Folks, we can’t give this issue away in this election. It is about fundamental freedom.” 
 
 Romney then replied by issuing a defense of Romneycare that sounded a lot like the defense that Obama (who might have even been taking notes) is likely to give of Obamacare: “I didn’t say I’m in favor of top-down government-run health care. Ninety-two percent of the people in my state had insurance before our plan went in place.” (For Obamacare, it’s nearly the same percentage of people, only nationwide) “And nothing changes for them. They own the same private insurance they had before.” (As Obama likes to say, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”) “And for the 8 percent of people who didn't have insurance, we said to them, if you can afford insurance, buy it yourself, any one of the plans out there, you can choose any plan.” (The same is true for Obamacare — except, as in Romneycare, for the large numbers of people who get shuttled onto Medicaid.) “There’s no government plan.” (There isn’t one in Obamacare either, as the public outcry caused the “public option” to be nixed.) 
 
 Referring to the individual mandate, Romney added, “We are insisting on personal responsibility.” 
 
 Santorum responded, “Does everybody in Massachusetts have a requirement to buy health care?” ||||| A sour fog settled over the Republican Party during the primary season. Several plausible candidates decided not to run for president, and the whole conversation ended up tainted by various political circus acts. 
 
 The G.O.P. did its best to appear unattractive. It had trouble talking the language of compassion. It seemed to regard reasonable political compromise as an act of dishonor. It offered little for struggling Americans except that government would leave them alone. 
 
 The Obama campaign took advantage. President Obama could have run against Mitt Romney by calling him a flip-flopper. Instead, the president tapped into the G.O.P. gestalt and accused him of being a soulless ideologue or the tool of ideologues. Judging by how the president was prepared for Wednesday’s debate, Obama’s staff apparently believed that that charge was actually true. 
 
 But, on Wednesday night, Romney finally emerged from the fog. He broke with the stereotypes of his party and, at long last, began the process of offering a more authentic version of himself. 
 
 Far from being a lackey to the rich, Romney vowed that rich people will not see tax bills go down under a Romney administration. He attacked Obama for giving a “kiss to New York banks.” Instead, he focused relentlessly on job creation for the middle class, which, he noted, has seen incomes fall by $4,300 under this president while gas prices have doubled and health care costs have surged. 
 
 Far from being an individualistic, social Darwinist, Romney spoke comfortably about compassion and shared destinies: “We’re a nation that believes that we’re all children of the same God, and we care for those that have difficulties, those that are elderly and have problems and challenges, those that are disabled.” 
 
 Far from wanting to eviscerate government and railing about government dependency, Romney talked about how to make government programs work better. “I’m not going to cut education funding,” he vowed. He praised government job-training efforts and said he wanted to consolidate them. He lamented that $90 billion has been shipped to energy corporations, which could have paid for two million teachers. 
 
 Far from being a pitchfork-wielding populist who wants to raze Washington, Romney said he would work with the people he finds there. “We have to work on a collaborative basis, not because we’re going to compromise our principle but because there is common ground.” He bragged that in his old job as governor, he met with Democrats every week. He boasted about his bipartisan health care bill. He praised the (semimythical) friendship between Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill. 
 
 Far from being an unthinking deregulator, Romney declared, “Regulation is essential. ... I mean, you have to have regulations so that you can have an economy work.” Instead of championing unfettered capitalism, he said he wanted predictable and workable rules. He criticized housing regulations that can’t give a clear idea of what a qualified mortgage is. He criticized financial regulations that favor big banks over small ones. 
 
 Romney didn’t describe a comprehensive governing philosophy, but he gave us a hint of a strong center-right pragmatic approach. It starts with 1986-style tax reform and Wyden-Ryan Medicare reform and then offers a glimpse of experimental pragmatism on most everything else. 
 
 Yes, it’s true. Romney’s tax numbers don’t add up. Yes, there’s a lot of budgetary flimflam. No, Romney still doesn’t have an easy answer to wage stagnation (neither does Obama). But Romney’s debate performance signals the return of Governor Mitt. Democrats call it hypocrisy; I call it progress. 
 
 You could conceivably build a majority coalition around this framework, winning over more working-class women and some Hispanic voters. The crucial test will be whether Romney can develop, brand and sell this approach over the campaign’s final month. 
 
 Most important, Romney did something no other mainstream Republican has had the guts to do. Either out of conviction or political desperation, he broke with Tea Party orthodoxy and began to redefine the Republican identity. And, having taken this step, he’s broken the spell. Conservatives loved it! They loved that it was effective, and it was effective because Romney could more authentically be the man who (I think) he truly is. 
 
 Now it’s the Obama campaign that has problems to solve. Politically, the president will have to go back to portraying Romney as a flip-flopper instead of an ideologue. Substantively, Obama will have to kindle new passion. So far, he’s seemed driven by the negative passion of stopping Republican extremism. He’ll have to develop a positive passion for something he actually wants to do. 
 
 I gave Obama better reviews than most pundits did Wednesday night, but his closing statement was as bad as any I’ve ever heard. If he can’t come up with a two-minute argument for why he should be president again, the former Mr. Audacity might still lose to the former Mr. Right Winger.
– Mitt Romney knows a little something about health care reform, and he threw his two cents on the pile today, saying President Obama "failed to learn the lessons" of Massachusetts. Romney took issue with Obama's "one-size-fits-all" approach, notes Politico, adding that reform should have been left to the states. But Obama's biggest failing, contends Romney, came when "he told the American people that you could keep your health insurance if you wanted to keep that plan, period," which was "a fundamental dishonesty." "The fact that the president sold it on a basis that was not true has undermined the foundation of his second term. I think it's rotting it away. We've got to have a president that can lead, and right now he's not able to do so." Elsewhere on your Sunday dial: Romney on Chris Christie: "Chris could easily become our nominee and save our party and help get this nation on the right track again. They don't come better than Chris Christie. He's a very popular governor in a very blue state. That's the kind of popularity and the kind of track record the Republican Party needs if we're going to take back the White House." Newt Gingrich on why Romney didn't pick Christie for veep: "Romney would have shrunk, and Christie would have blossomed." Gingrich on why Obama didn't put Hillary Clinton on his 2012 ticket: "If you had said to him, ‘You have to be re-elected but Bill Clinton is going to be next to you for four years,’ he would have said, ‘It ain’t worth it. I don’t need this level of pain.'" Dianne Feinstein on LAX shooting: "The weapon was a .223 MP-15, where the MP stands for military and police, clearly designed not for general consumption. Same gun that was used at Aurora. Would I do a bill? Sure, I would do a bill. I mean, I believe this down deep in my soul." Mike Rogers on why HealthCare.gov should be shut down temporarily: "They’re trying to change a tire on a car going 75 miles an hour down the expressway. That’s not the way cybersecurity works."