We underscored President Obama's vulnerability on healthcare and Medicare yesterday, pointing to polling data and eye-opening past statements from Obama himself to fortify our point. The Romney campaign is out with another television ad seeking to exact a political price for Obamacare's multibillion-dollar Medicare raid. It notes that "free healthcare" doesn't exactly live up to its billing, sniping at the new scheme's raft of tax increases, including the mother of them all -- the Obamacare mandate tax:
This spot meticulously sources its claims, citing two analyses from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and a report in USA Today as substantiation. I nevertheless await Politifact's tortured explanation for why the ad is somehow false with baited breath. (Remember gang, we've been informed that it's Romney's campaign that's playing dirty). Meanwhile, Paul Ryan is out on the stump, driving home the math:
Last night's NBC/WSJ poll indicated that voters aren't too high on the Romney-Ryan plan to save Medicare when they're subjected to the Democrats' explanation of it (which is how the question was asked). Interestingly, the same survey didn't poll Obama's solution -- perhaps because it doesn't exist. Voters were simply read a tendentious description of the GOP plan, then asked whether they sided with it, or preferred Obama's vague opposition to it. But other polling has demonstrated that if Republicans are aggressive on this front, they can win the argument. That's why ads and speeches like the ones embedded above are so vital.