EDITOR'S NOTE _ An occasional look behind the rhetoric in political campaigns.

WASHINGTON (AP) — It looks like a tax, smells like a tax, and the Supreme Court says it must be a tax. But politicians in both parties are squirming over how to define the Thing in President Barack Obama's health care law that requires people to pay up if they don't get health insurance.

The problem for Obama is that, if the Thing is indeed a tax, he is by definition a raiser of taxes on the middle class, which he promised not to be.

If that sounds like an opportunity for Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney, well, it's not that simple.

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