Obamacare imposes huge tax on Middle Class.

According to Ann Althouse:

Obama imposes huge tax on the American middle class.

That's the story, right? That's the spin for Romney. What's the spin for Obama?

UPDATE: Drudge points to Obama's assertion, back in September 2009 that the mandate is not a tax.

STEPHANOPOULOS: [I]t's still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That's not true, George. The — for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.
I have said repeatedly that Obama would be worse off if Obamacare were upheld, but what I'm really seeing is how bad it is for him with the mandate declared a tax.

Remember the Democrats got the statute passed by insisting it was not a tax. Now, we learn it is only constitutional because it is a tax. That's got to hurt politically.

ADDED: Romney has at least 3 big arguments:

1. Obama imposed a huge new tax on working people.

2. Obama deceived the American people by saying it was not a tax, when it was.

3. The law made it look like money would go to insurance companies — in the form of new premiums — that would keep premiums low as the companies were required to take on people with pre-existing conditions, but now we find out that the money is really going to go to the federal government. [ADDED: So get ready for your premiums to spiral up and/or for insurance companies to be ruined.]

On the one hand, I'm glad that there is finally some restraint under the Commerce Clause.

On the other hand, I'm tired of being treatd like a rube by the left. They said it wasn't a tax. We knew they were lying back then, but they solemnly told us that we were morons for calling it a tax.

Then, when they needed it to be a tax, a tax it became. They turned on a dime without and embraced a position they had insisted could only be held by dumb-asses. Now they will pretend that their initial position never existed and only dumb-asses could claim that they ever said it wasn't a tax.

Let's make them pay a price in November, if only to stand up for a little thing called "you need to fargin' live in the real world and not in some post-modern place where the truth is what you need it to be this minute."

I blame Roberts for enabling this bullshit.

Now, let's go watch the stock market collapse.

And shut up and eat your broccoli, citizen; it's not a mandate, it's a tax.