[GeorgeEckland]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_842153.html

Will these guys ever stop talking out of both sides of their mouths?

WASHINGTON -- Does Mitt Romney protest too much?

He does, says the chief architect of the landmark Massachusetts health care plan that the former governor signed into law, one which Romney now all but disowns in public appearances widely seen as preparations for the 2012 Republican presidential primary race.

"It's largely political," Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of Romney's call to repeal the one-year-old federal Affordable Care Act. Gruber also worked with Obama administration officials and Congress to write the federal health care law.

As the fifth anniversary of the Massachusetts law approaches next month, it has become Romney's chief handicap in the former governor's prospective bid for the Republican presidential nomination. The state law is also expected to serve as a preview of how the federal law will -- or will not -- work on the national level in a few years.

For the federal law, "Massachusetts absolutely was the model," Gruber said. "It would have been much harder if we didn't have a working example to show that it worked."