The Daily Background

Oh, this is priceless. Instead of going the way that the American public wants, and proposing universal health care plans like Democrats are, Mitt Romney wants us to copy what Hezbollah has done:

… [Romney] thinks Hezbollah’s work establishing health clinics and schools in southern Lebanon hold important lessons for the United States.

“Did you notice in Lebanon what Hezbollah did?” Romney asked Friday during a town-hall meeting in Iowa. “Lebanon became a democracy some time ago. And while their government was getting underway, Hezbollah went into southern Lebanon and provided health clinics to some of the people there and schools, and they built their support by having done so.

Romney’s effort to learn from Hezbollah’s work in establishing health care and schools is part of a broader effort on his part to make nurturing the “foundations of liberty” a priority in U.S. foreign policy.

Yes, Romney is advocating free health care. But not here in the US– no, he doesn’t think us Americans should have access to free health care– instead this idea of his, admittedly stolen from Hezbollah, would only be for other countries, whose citizenship he wants to make more favorable towards the United States.

Partisanship aside, this isn’t a terrible idea, but it’s certainly not the kind of idea that you’d expect to be hearing from a “small government” Republican. I kind of wonder whether or not Romney will face some kind of backlash for proposing a program which he himself connects to Hezbollah (it’s not like he had to mention his inspiration for the idea), and which would undoubtedly mean a substantial increase in foreign aid spending.

Oh yeah, and whatever happened to taking care of your own citizens first? 18,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health care.

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