ROMNEY GOES ON OFFENSE ON HEALTH CARE

LAS VEGAS, Nevada – Mitt Romney got aggressive on health care today during an appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s winter meeting, training his fire on President Obama rather than answering to critics.

A Massachusetts resident in the audience observed in the question-and-answer session that Romney had run what the man said was a “very gentlemanly campaign” for governor against a Democratic woman, Shannon O’Brien, in 2002, and so, the man wanted to know, would Romney run more like a pit bull if he became the GOP’s nominee against Obama next year.

Romney replied, “There’s no question in my view that when you run, when you disagree with someone on their policies as much as I disagree with Barack Obama on his domestic policies… I will take them on head-on and aggressively if I’m the nominee.”

And then he did a surprising thing: He pivoted to health care, an issue that has been described as the albatross around his neck in the coming Republican primary because many conservatives loathe the individual mandate in the Massachusetts reform plan he implemented as governor that served as a model for Obama’s plan.

“And by the way, if we get the chance to talk about health care — which will be fun, because of course he does me the great favor of saying that I was the inspiration for his plan — I’ll say if that’s the case, why didn’t you call me?” he said to the crowd, growing more animated. “Why didn’t you ask what was wrong? Why didn’t you ask if this was an experiment, what worked and what didn’t and I would have told him, I know, what you’re doing, Mr. President, is going to bankrupt us.”

He concluded, “I can’t wait to have those conversations.”

The fiery detour came just after an earlier question that was specific to his handling of health care in the Bay State — a question he answered the same way he has been recently: by telling the audience that if he were elected president he would exempt states from Obama’s health plan and then try to repeal the law.

He had the audience chuckling when he said he had gotten the question so many times it was depressing.

Erin McPike is a national political reporter for RealClearPolitics. She can be reached at emcpike@realclearpolitics.com.