How good is Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski? How lame are the opposition researchers for Mitt Romney's Republican rivals? We now know that the answer to both questions is "very."

Kaczynski has turned up a televised interview and an an op-ed, both from 2009, in which Romney clearly suggests that the federal government ought to adopt an individual mandate for health care. Yes, Romney's support for such a mandate in Masscahusetts is old news: It was a key feature of the health care reform bill he signed there. But, during the presidential campaign, Romney has defended that position on federalism grounds: The solution worked for Massachusetts, but Obama and the Democrats were wrong to take it national.

The claim was never that convincing: Among other things, Romney, in his 2010 book, implied strongly he thought the Massachusetts reforms should be a model for a national plan. That passage hadn't referred to the mandate explicitly, giving Romney some plausible deniability, but how can Romney explain away this passage from a July op-ed for USA Today?

There's a better way. And the lessons we learned in Massachusetts could help Washington find it. ... First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages "free riders" to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.

The phrase in bold describes, exactly, the mandate in the Affordable Care Act: It's a tax penalty for people who could afford insurance but choose not to buy it. And that's not coincidental. A key player in both Romney's and Obama's reform efforts was MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who has said repeatedly the coverage schemes are identical and Romney "can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he's just lying."

If that doesn't convince you, then listen closely to the clip Kaczynski found from "Meet the Press." (See above.) Not only does Romney cite the Massachusetts plan as a model. He also speaks favorably of the Wyden-Bennett health care bill, the elegant but ultimately unpopular bipartisan bill. That proposal had, you guessed it, a mandate.