At least one Senator on Sunday made it clear that health care reform will still be used as a cudgel to beat Mitt Romney, even as his campaign attempts to brush the candidate's connection to Obamacare aside following the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law.
"Mitt Romney is the Obamacare daddy. He gave birth to this baby up in Massachusetts and now he doesn't recognize it, he can't pick out any strains in the hereditary chain there that look like anything that he did in Massachusetts.," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on CBS's Face the Nation.
Romney championed a health care system as governor of Massachusetts that has some similarities to the federal law the President pushed through Congress in 2010. Most notably, Romney's Massachusetts system included the controversial individual mandate to buy insurance, which some say was the inspiration for the mandate contained in the federal plan.
Since the Supreme Court recently upheld the law, the issue has been back in the spotlight, with Romney and his campaign trying to shift the focus back to the lagging economy. Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour attempted to do just that on Face the Nation on Sunday.
"Every presidential election in the United States is a referendum on the incumbent president, if the incumbent is running, and his record," he said. "But at the end of the day, Mitt Romney also has to give people something to vote for."
Though Romney has come under fire for failing to release detailed policy proposals on issues ranging from the economy to replacing Obama's health care reforms, Barbour defended Romney's choice to hold off on offering concrete plans.
"I think that is more a matter of timing," he said. "I think right now, Romney is smart to wait before he starts laying out proposal after proposal, but he ultimately will."
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