What if Mitt Romney...

...had won the Republican nomination in 2008 instead of John McCain? That's not so far-fetched, is it? (I've read that the Bush White House secretly favored him anyway.) And what if the economy hadn't crashed so dramatically in the fall of '08 and the former governor from Massachusetts had eked out a victory over that young senator from Illinois? Again, not so far-fetched, right?

So what if?

Would a President Romney, with a Democratic House and Senate, have tried to pass some form of health care reform, like he did in Massachusetts? And wouldn't it have looked an awful lot like Romneycare Obamacare the ACA?

Indulge me for a moment.

In 2008, before the financial crisis, polls showed that health care reform was the most pressing domestic issue. And universal health care was arguably Mitt Romney's biggest accomplishment in his one term as governor of Massachusetts. So if a President Romney had taken office in 2009 with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, is it so hard to imagine him working with leaders of both parties to craft some form of health care legislation as he did in the Bay State? And can't you imagine such a bill passing with at least some bipartisan support? Oh, sure, there would have been cries of "Socialism!" from some corners of the GOP, but it would have become law anyway. And everyone today would be calling Romneycare a huge success.

Whaddaya think?