On the same day Romney announced his “federalist approach” to health care that summer, Atlas tried to discredit his plan by pointing to his support for a health insurance mandate in Massachusetts.

“Mitt Romney’s legacy is the creation of a multi-billion dollar government health bureaucracy that punishes employers and insists middle income individuals either purchase health insurance or pay for their own health care,” Atlas said at the time. “The former is a mandate, the latter is a tax, and neither one is free market.”