Alternate headline: “Scott Brown once again begs tea partiers to primary him.”

“Governor Romney showed a lot of courage today by standing his ground on the reforms he put in place in Massachusetts,” Brown said in a statement. “What he did as governor worked for Massachusetts by getting health insurance to more people.”…

“Now he has laid out his plan for the nation, which unlike ObamaCare does not require a vast expansion of the federal government and a half-trillion dollars in new taxes,” Brown said. “Instead, he would return to the states the power to determine their own healthcare solutions, which is where it belongs.”

This is mainly a case of Brown repaying a political debt. He owes Team Mitt big time for their help, both financial and managerial, in knocking off Coakley to win the Senate special election last year. At a moment when every other Republican in America is groaning over Romney’s speech today — except of course for Pawlenty, who’s privately cackling like the Joker — he’s showing some loyalty. What I don’t get is why he’d go out of his way to say how RomneyCare is working for Massachusetts. It’s one thing to pay lip service to Romney’s alleged courage in defending RomneyCare (in fact, Mitt really had no choice in what he said today), it’s another to tout the alleged virtues of the program. Isn’t this the same guy who shocked the world by winning in the bluest of blue states after Democrats had framed the election as a de facto referendum on ObamaCare? And now he’s implicitly saluting the individual mandate (at the state level, granted) as the cure for what ails us? Mystifying.

Oh well. He’s primary-proof and he knows it. Damn those liberal electorates! For your viewing pleasure, a few more minutes from Romney’s “damn right I’m the man to blame for RomneyCare” mea non-culpa this afternoon. When you’re done, read Avik Roy’s withering response at NRO. Exit quotation: “Mitt Romney just gave a more articulate defense of Obamacare than President Obama ever has.”