Tommy Thompson wants you to know he hates Obamacare

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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With the Supreme Court set to take up the constitutionality of Obamacare, the issue could play a major role in some high-profile races around the nation next year.

Perhaps with that in mind, former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson — now a primary candidate for U.S. Senate — has launched a tough new video aggressively attacking the law. (This summer, of course, The Club for Growth went after Thompson for supporting “Obamacare.)

Thompson’s argument seems to be a semantic one: Sure, he supported doing something to fix the nation’s health care costs, but he certainly never supported what ultimately became known as “Obamacare.” That might be technically correct, but let’s he’s going to have a hard time running away from things like this press release from November, 2009:

Tommy Thompson and Richard Gephardt, Board members of America’s Agenda: Health Care for All, today released the following statement on the Senate Health-Care reform bill:

“The health-care bill in the Senate represents another milestone in achieving meaningful health- care reform for millions of Americans. It is now critical that members of Congress work together in a bi-partisan fashion to pass a common-sense, fiscally responsible solution to drive down health-care costs, ensure access to affordable and quality care, increase efficiency and achieve real savings.

This strikes me as being worse politically than what Mitt Romney has to contend with. Romney may have supported and enacted a single-payer system in Massachusetts — but he never supported a policy Obama was trying to pass.

This also highlights the difficulties former politicians encounter when they try to get back in the game after taking a few years off of governing to consult. It could be worse, I suppose. Hey, at least there aren’t any pictures of Thompson sitting on a couch and talking climate change with Nancy Pelosi

Matt K. Lewis