Crawford: For Or Against Obamneycare?

1st District Congressman Rick Crawford has a developed quite the reputation of becoming a serial flip-flopper on various issues.

Crawford once signed a “no new taxes” pledge and then ended up proposing his own tax increase and also pledged to oppose Congressional pork to keep federal spending down, only to then flip-flop and signal he wants pork for his district.

Rick Crawford's principles are just like Arkansas's weather – it'll change in an instant.

Yesterday's upholding of Obamneycare by the Supreme Court caused Rick Crawford to post a Youtube video where he railed against the Court's ruling.

Two chuckle-worthy notes on this video:  First, it was recorded on June 20th, eight days before the ruling and second, it appears by watching the first image in the video that Crawford taped 3 versions of his position on Obamneycare.

But the bigger issue is that Rick Crawford seems to have been for parts of Obamneycare before he was against it.

Last year he praised portions of the program. This is from a June 2011 Associated Press article:

Crawford said, “I don’t want to discuss this on a partisan basis by saying all of Obamacare is bad.” A spokesman went on to say that “he does believe that there are parts of Obamacare that were good, such as the prohibition of excluding people from insurance based on pokies online pre-existing conditions.”

But yesterday Rick Crawford said this about Obamneycare:

“For my part, I will continue pushing for a full legislative repeal of the President's healthcare mandate.”

As usual, it's hard to know e

xactly where Rick Crawford stands.

Does he want to keep prohibition of excluding people with pre-exisiting conditions from getting health insurance or does he want to repeal it?   When you poll voters about Obamneycare it is very unpopular, but when you ask about various aspects of the program they are very popular.

So the question arises, which parts does Crawford want to keep and which part does he want to repeal?  And will he stick by those principles?

To his credit, Crawford's Democratic opponent Scott Ellington released a statement yesterday making it clear where he stood on Obamneycare:

“Those who have a pre-existing medical condition won't be denied coverage; sons and daughters can stay under their parents' coverage until they are 26.

“A person will not lose her coverage if she loses her job, and if health care coverage is not provided at work, affordable coverage will still be made available.

“Now is not a time for Washington's continued partisan spinning and fighting. I urge Congressman Rick Crawford to reject his leader's pointless and hyper-political vote to repeal the ACA. It's not helpful.”

Finally, it seems that I'm one of the few political writers who refer to ACA as Obamneycare.  I don't understand why Democrats don't constantly remind voters that without Mitt Romney and his health care law he passed in Massachusetts there would probably be no Obamacare.

Its puts Romney on the defensive.  For example, Republicans constantly decry the individual mandate in ACA, but conveniently forget their Presidential nominee passed essentially the same law while he was Governor.

Cognitive dissonance at it's finest.