This is absurd. Mitt Romney’s dancing. That’s sure to literally be true, but to call the Obamacare mandate a ‘tax,’ then a ‘penalty,’ then a ‘tax’ again? When his own Romneycare mandate does the identical thing to your tax return?

Romney’s original position was that the individual mandate he imposed through his state-based reform law was a “tax penalty,” which he strongly favored. This week, however, the Republican’s campaign switched gears, saying the policy is a “penalty,” but not a “tax.”

Then yesterday. On Obamacare:

“The Supreme Court is the highest court in the nation, and it said that it’s a tax, so it’s a tax,” Mr. Romney told CBS News. “They have spoken. There’s no way around that.”

Then Romneycare:

“The chief justice in his opinion made it very clear that at the state level, states have the power to put in place mandates,” he said. “And as a result, Massachusetts’s mandate was a mandate, was a penalty, was described that way by the legislature and by me, and so it stays as it was.”

What a silly man. Deeply confused. Thoroughly disingenuous, really, the lying-est candidate since Richard Nixon. Here’s the wiki on Romneycare, under ‘Individual Taxes’:

If a resident does not have coverage and does not have a waiver, the Department of Revenue will enforce the insurance requirement by imposing a penalty. In 2007, the penalty was the loss of the personal exemption. Beginning in 2008, the penalty is half the cost of the lowest available yearly premium which will be enforced as an assessed addition to the individual’s income tax.

And here was Romney touting his ‘mandate’:

In 2008, when Romney was running for president for the first time, ABC News host Charlie Gibson asked him during a New Hampshire debate, “Governor … you imposed tax penalties in Massachusetts?” Romney replied, “Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don’t be free riders.”

Again:

In a 2009 op-ed in USA Today, Romney laid out some suggestions for President Obama to follow on health care. “First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others,” Romney wrote.

This is pathetic. Just say it: ‘They’re identical.’ Except for . .

. . the penalties under Romneycare are bigger than under Obamacare. According to a study from the Center for Health Law and Economics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, forwarded to Salon by the Obama campaign, the differences are huge. An adult over the age of 27 who makes more than 300 percent of the poverty line (about $37,000 a year) and chooses not to purchase health insurance would pay at least $695 in penalties under Obamcare. Under Romneycare, that same person would pay at least $1,530 in penalties.

Obamacare is less punitive. Got that Mitt?