Mitt Romney makes a campaign stop at a diner in New Hampshire. He opens with the usual pandering candidate-with-regular-folk schtick but then decides to try out some new material. He says we can reach out to “moderate muslim” and “poor African” states by practicing what he calls “healthcare diplomacy.” What? Has he noticed that most Americans these days think our healthcare sucks? A waitress goes after him and shakes him a little. He recovers pretty well, but she has exposed him: at the top of the healthcare food chain are rich people and government employees and Romney is both. For him, and people like him (including all the candidates for president), U.S. healthcare is about our “envy-of-the-world technology and medicine and know-how.” For strapped seniors it means bus caravans to Montreal and Tijuana. For young people it means going on “medical holiday” to London to get your teeth fixed!

Romney: “With our healthcare we can reach out to other nations.”
Waitress: “What about our nation? C’mon!”

On the defensive, Romney touts the plan he helped put in place in Massachusetts and calls Hillary Clinton’s long-ago plan “socialized medicine” (yikes!) because “the government paid.” Somebody off camera says, “So who paid in Massachusetts?”

Meantime, Giuliani won’t talk to or about Michael Moore.

Yay for the shoot-and-upload 2007 campaign season!