Giuliani Ties Romney to 'HillaryCare'

Oct. 4, 2007 — -- To enhance his aura as the GOP's national front-runner, Rudy Giuliani makes a point of ignoring his Republican rivals and concentrating his attacks on Democrats.

But below the radar, Giuliani is working to tie former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, his party rival, who sits atop the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, to the health-reform package recently unveiled by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

The stakes are considerable: If Giuliani succeeds in raising doubts about Romney's free-market credentials, the former New York mayor might blunt any advantage Romney receives from being the more socially conservative candidate.

"There's a good reason why Mr. Romney didn't roll out his Massachusetts plan to the nation," Giuliani adviser Sally Pipes wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal. "Being based on mandates, new bureaucracy, increased regulation and wishful thinking, it looks a lot like Hillary Clinton's: that's not healthy for anyone."

The Giuliani camp is not alone in seeing substantial overlap between the plan Romney approved as governor and Clinton's latest effort at reform. Although the former first lady's proposal includes a Medicare-like option not present in Romney's Massachusetts plan, which focused strictly on private health insurance, they both include a requirement that all individuals obtain insurance.

"What [Romney] did in Massachusetts is not that far from where [Clinton] is," said Robert Blendon, who directs Harvard University's program on publican opinion and health policy. "He was different as governor than he is now as a presidential candidate."

Blendon says Giuliani's latest line of attack is a natural one for him to make given the antipathy that many conservatives feel toward government mandates.

"Conservatives don't like the idea of requiring people to do something they really don't want to do," said Blendon. "The individual mandate polling that's been done shows conservatives are much less likely to like a proposal that includes such a requirement."