Mitt Romney, author...

...of No Apology, is scheduled to give another speech today in which he apologizes, this time for passing health care reform when he was governor of Massachusetts. (Romney gave a similar speech in 2008 in which he apologized for being a Mormon.)

I'm not sure if Romney can win the Republican nomination at this point no matter what he says or does. (The party leaders sure seem to be flailing about for someone -- anyone -- besides Mitt.) The guy who was the darling of the conservatives in '08 is now unacceptable to the base. How did that happen?

Forget for a minute Romney's other glaring deficits (like his inauthenticity). The former Bay State governor is a non-starter because Congressional Republicans in 2009 decided to make an issue out of health care reform.

Terrified of becoming irrelevant, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner decided to draw a line in the sand: the conservative health care solutions put forth by the GOP in the '90s suddenly amounted to "socialism" and "a government takeover" when adopted by President Obama and the Democrats.

Disingenuous? Perhaps. But riverboat gamblers couldn't have played such a weak hand so well. Republicans were able to turn public opinion against health care reform and made substantial gains at the polls in 2010.

But the GOP's gains turned out to be Mitt Romney's loss. Because now, paradoxically, Romney's single-biggest achievement in public office is now a liability. And no matter what Mitt says -- today or otherwise -- he's toast.

So what should Mitt Romney have done? Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but short of changing parties (which may have made the most sense), the Massachusetts governor could have gotten out in front on the health care debate in 2009. Instead of allowing the GOP to sabotage reform, Romney could have actually led his party in working with the Democrats to fashion a bill more to their liking. He could have said, "Hey, I've already done this at the state level. Let me help." Then legislation could have passed with bipartisan support and Romney and the Republicans could have taken credit for it. Instead, the GOP is left with a Pyrrhic victory: short-term political gain coupled with a long-term public relations disaster. For decades, the GOP will be linked to the effort to stymie health care reform.

And poor ol' Mitt? He'll go down in history as an asterisk.