The likely Republican Presidential candidate fulfilled the White House’s fondest wishes, defending the mandate-subsidize-overregulate program he enacted as Massachusetts Governor in 2006 even as he denounced President Obama’s national reprise. He then proposed his own U.S. reform that is sensible and might do so some actual good, but which also runs against the other two plans. These are unbridgeable policy and philosophical differences, though Mr. Romney is nonetheless trying to leap over them like Evel Knievel heading for the Snake River Canyon…

The political tragedy is that Mr. Romney could have emerged as one of ObamaCare’s most potent critics had he made different choices two years ago amid one of the country’s most consequential debates in generations. He might have said that as Governor he made a good-faith effort to resolve some of health care’s long-running dysfunctions, but that it hadn’t worked out and that’s why state experiments are valuable…

He even said yesterday that he would do it all over again in Massachusetts, which means he is in for a year in which Republicans attack him on policy while Democrats defend him on policy but attack him as a hypocrite. Who knows what GOP voters will make of all this, but we won’t be surprised if Mr. Romney’s campaign suffers as many broken bones (433) as Knievel.