In February, 2012, Stuart Butler, the author of the Heritage Foundation brief that first proposed the mandate, wrote an op-ed for USA Today in which he recanted that support. “I’ve altered my views on many things,” he wrote. “The individual mandate in health care is one of them.” Senator Orrin Hatch, who had been a co-sponsor of the Chafee bill, emerged as one of the mandate’s most implacable opponents in 2010, writing in The Hill that to come to “any other conclusion” than that the mandate is unconstitutional “requires treating the Constitution as the servant, rather than the master, of Congress.” Mitt Romney, who had both passed an individual mandate as governor and supported Wyden-Bennett, now calls Obama’s law an “unconstitutional power grab from the states,” and has promised, if elected, to begin repealing the law “on Day One.”

This essentially assumes that American's are idiots and have short memories. I do think that this is going to be very difficult for Romney during the election. The whole "you were for it before you were against it" line.

My father in law wrote the Heritage foundation asking them about whether it was true that they once supported a mandate? They responded that "yes, they once had but that they've since changed their thinking". The way I see it, it's a GREAT idea when it's their idea. Otherwise, it's unconstitutional socialism.