Tommy Thompson, former Obamacare supporter, current hypocrite

Tommy Thompson, typical Republican. Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, now running for the state's open Senate seat, has an awful lot in common with Mitt Romney: He was for Obamacare before he was against it. Think Progress notes that Nancy-Ann DeParle, President Barack Obama's top adviser on health care, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel all about his participation with administration in planning the law's implementation.

[...] DeParle said that the point of inviting Thompson to the meeting was that he was a supporter of the law known as the Affordable Care Act and'unlike many Republicans'Thompson at that time wanted to see it implemented rather than obstructed.

"He was, from what we could tell, working toward implementation," DeParle said. "I'm not going to say that he agreed with every single provision that ended up in the law'I won't say that. But he was very helpful in implementation and we asked for his help and he said he would help us.

"Then I don't know, he decided he's not for it now but he certainly was then. . . . He seems to have swerved to the right," she said.

Thompson's campaign, of course, immediately rebutted: "Thompson has always opposed Obamacare [...]" Always, anyway, since after about last June, when he wrote an editorial at Huffington Post urging governors to set up exchanges under Obamacare because it is a "tremendous opportunity to use marketplace choice and allow insurance companies to compete in their respective states." TP also notes that he's criticized the Medicare cuts Paul Ryan included in his budget, while praising how Obamacare reformed Medicare payments, and how he tried to convince Republicans not to go down the futile repeal path. Like that'd work.

All that's history, though. Now Thompson is running for the Senate, and has to be as much of a right-wing whack-job as the state's other senator, millionaire tea partier Ron Johnson, and of course the Wisconsin guy at the top of the ticket, Paul Ryan. The guy with enough health care policy chops to have served as secretary of Health and Human Services (even if it was under Bush) has tossed all that aside, and is now on the repeal bandwagon. Because he's a Republican.

There's enough hypocrisy, and certainly enough Republicans, already in the Senate. Let's keep this one out.

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