Will #LePage end up working with the 'Gestapo' IRS?

Josh Barro over at Bloomberg News has an interesting theory on why Governor Paul LePage is so upset at the Obamacare mandate that he called the IRS "the new Gestapo" (and then pretended to apologize). Barro's theory? That LePage knows he'll have to work with the federal tax agency, rather than being able to tell President Obama to "go to hell," as LePage promised on the campaign trail.

Barro's analysis is based on the idea that Maine's Medicaid program, MaineCare, already covers many people included in the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare - so Maine will get the same coverage it now gets, for a lot less, thanks to federal subsidies.

What Barro misses, though, is the latest news - that LePage actually wants to dump all those extra people off Medicaid, rather than collecting federal dollars to keep covering them.

Nevertheless, Barro's point that LePage hasn't declared outright that he'll skip the federal money - along the lines of Texas governor Rick Perry - is worth noting as a key distinction between this Tea Party governor and others around the country.