Despite copious evidence to back up the connection, GOP
frontrunner Mitt Romney has yet to admit the link between the
Massachusetts health care overhaul he signed into law as
governor and the federal overhaul President Obama passed last
year. You can understand why he's declined: Given that Romney is
running as an establishment conservative for the Republican
nomination, the friendly connection to the rival party's leader
and his most prominent policy achievement would be, well, kind
of awkward.  But when the Massachusetts law first took effect,
Romney did praise a different prominent liberal collaborator as
one of the law's "parents" whose work was "absolutely essential"
to passage: former Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, a longtime
universal coverage advocate whose proposed 1975 health care
overhaul was ditched after the Congressional Budget Office
estimated that it would cost three times what Kennedy's staff
had claimed.  Via Mother Jones, here's the video: