Romney goes against GOP on ‘tax’ label

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last week, Republicans on Capitol Hill spent four days laying out an attack on President Obama’s health care law as a massive tax increase.

On Monday, Mitt Romney’s top campaign strategist undercut them.

Eric Fehrnstrom said Mr. Romney agrees with Mr. Obama that the law’s punishment for flouting the individual mandate and not buying health insurance is a “penalty,” not a tax — just like the legislation Mr. Romney signed as governor of Massachusetts.

“The governor has consistently described the mandate in Massachusetts as a penalty,” Mr. Fehrnstrom said on MSNBC. “The governor disagreed with the ruling of the court; he agreed with the dissent that was written by Justice [Antonin] Scalia, which clearly states the mandate was not a tax.”

After watching the court reject their legal arguments, congressional Republicans settled for what they hoped would be a powerful political attack, bolstered by the court’s declaration that the individual mandate amounted to a tax. The court’s conclusion contradicted Mr. Obama, who during the debate in 2009 and 2010 had repeatedly said it wasn’t a tax.

“The court has now spoken. It is a tax,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, said in the aftermath of the ruling.

He said the justices “blew the president’s cover.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee began issuing press releases using the court-approved tax argument to attack Democrats.

After Mr. Fehrnstrom’s comments Monday, however, activists said they had been undercut.

“We did not like Obamacare to start with and now that the Supreme Court has called it a tax, it gave Romney the room to run straight for a touchdown,” Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips wrote on the group’s blog. “What kind of idiots are running the Romney campaign? Instead of spiking the football and winning, the Romney campaign has just turned over the ball.”

He wondered whether it was too late for the GOP to have a brokered convention and replace Mr. Romney as its presidential nominee.

“One — it was a stupid thing to say,” said Ben Marchi, former director of the Virginia chapter of the anti-tax group Americans for Prosperity. “At the end of the day, whether you call it a tax or a fee, it means more money out of working Americans’ pockets in tough economic times. People who don’t have jobs right now don’t care whether you call it a tax or a fee.”

Still, he hoped conservatives would rally to Mr. Romney anyway.

“Conservatives don’t trust him because he’s the author of Romneycare. Conservatives trust him because he’s pledged to repeal Obamacare,” Mr. Marchi said.

Mr. McConnell’s office didn’t address the conflicting Republican messages, choosing instead to focus on an area where the Senate minority leader agreed with Mr. Romney: “The Supreme Court should have ruled Obamacare unconstitutional,” a spokesman said.

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