"My motto is: IOKIYAMR" (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Mitt Romney, blaming Rick Santorum for the passage of Obamacare because Santorum endorsed Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey (
Feb. 22, 2012):
The reason we have Obama Care -- the reason we have Obama Care is because the Senator you supported over Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter, the pro- choice Senator of Pennsylvania that you supported and endorsed in a race over Pat Toomey, he voted for Obama Care. If you had not supported him, if we had said, no to Arlen Specter, we would not have Obama Care. So don't look at me. Take a look in the mirror.
Despite the ridiculousness of that argument (and it is especially ludicrous given Romney's own failure to support Toomey), the next day Mitt Romney
kept up the attack, this time slamming Santorum for having supported Specter's 1996 presidential bid:
"There was also in 1996 when he supported Arlen Specter . . . He supported the pro-choice candidate, Arlen Specter," Romney said, against a pro-life candidate, Bob Dole. "This taking one for the team, that's business as usual in Washington."
And
on Monday, Romney's campaign once again leveled the same attack on Rick Santorum, questioning his conservative credentials for having supported the moderate Specter.
Santorum says he endorsed Specter out of friendship because Specter was a colleague from Pennsylvania. And as HuffPost's Sam Stein reminds us, that's the same defense offered by Mitt Romney for his own support of Democrats:
"I don't think they're mortal sins for Republicans to make contributions to good people and to their friends, irrespective of their party," he told reporters upon announcing his Senate bid, according to a February 3, 1994 Boston Herald article.
"I place my friendship above politics. I have not been intent on plotting a political resume," he declared elsewhere, according to a Boston Globe report from the day before.
The difference between what Romney was doing and what Santorum was doing is that Santorum was supporting a Republican while Romney was supporting a Democrat. Which brings us to a new acronym: IOKIYAMR. It's okay if you are Mitt Romney, the concept that no matter what you do, it's wrong ... unless you are Mitt Romney.
So if you support a guy who later becomes a Democrat, it's terrible, but if you support a Democrat, it's okay, because IOKIYAMR.
If your name is Barack Obama and you sign into law health care reform plan that includes health care exchanges and an individual mandate, you're an America-hating socialist, but if you do the exact same thing in Massachusetts and then support it at the federal level, it's okay, because IOKIYAMR.
It's the same reason that President Obama's Iran policy is wrong (even though Mitt Romney shares the key substantive points) and it's the same reason President Obama's stimulus plan was bad (even though Mitt Romney called for a similar one). It's the same reason it was wrong to vote for Rick Santorum in Michigan if you were a Democrat to screw with Republicans even though Mitt Romney voted across party lines in Massachusetts to screw with Democrats. If you're Mitt Romney's opponent, whatever you did was wrong, and whatever he did was right. IOKIYAMR. You don't need to know anything else.