(Image source: CBS )

BY FERDOUS AL-FARUQUE

A tax or not a tax? Democrats and Republicans have been fighting over the definition of President Obama’s health care law ever since the Supreme Court declared it constitutional under Congress’ authority to tax. On Monday Mitt Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said this on MSNBC :

Fehrnstrom: “The Governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court’s ruling the mandate was a tax.
Todd: “So he agrees with the president.”
Fehrnstrom: “That’s correct.”

Going against the GOP leadership didn’t help Romney with the rest of the party.  On Wednesday Romney sat down with CBS’s Jan Crawford for an exclusive and contradicted his senior adviser saying:

Romney: “Well the Supreme Court has the final word and their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it’s a tax.”

Politically the problem for the presumptive GOP presidential nominee is he passed a similar health care law in Massachusetts, when he was governor, which was characterized as a penalty. But during Wednesday’s interview Romney also defended the Massachusetts law as a penalty not a tax and said:

Romney: “The chief justice, in his opinion, made it very clear that … states have the power to put in place mandates. They don't need to require them to be called taxes in order for them to be constitutional. And as a result, Massachusetts' mandate … was a penalty.”

The National Journal’s Major Garrett tells PBS’ Newshour, the Romney campaign initially sided with the dissenters in the Supreme Court ruling that the law was a penalty. But after pressure from GOP leaders he is now calling it a tax on middle-class families so they can wield it as a political weapon come November.

Garrett: "Most of the conservatives who are on the ballot and who are raising money and who are contributing to Romney want this to be a mandate election on health care and taxation.”

After the CBS interview, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page wrote a scathing opinion of the Romney campaign’s shifting message. The editorial says the former governor could have used the Supreme Court’s ruling to admit his own mistake in passing the Massachusetts law and vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Instead the Journal says:

“This latest mistake is of a piece with the campaign's insular staff and strategy that are slowly squandering an historic opportunity.”

Also in response to Romney’s CBS interview, Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod tweeted:

Axelrod: “Mitt [says Federal] freerider penalty is [a] ‘tax,’ [but] identical [Massachusetts] law is not. If he were in [the White House], parsley would be [the] official [vegetable and] Twister [the] national pasttime.”