Ramesh Ponnuru here in March 2012 in the wake of both Romney and Gingrich putting the finger on Heritage for the individual mandate in October 2011:
"So yes, conservative opinion on the mandate has changed. But I don’t think it’s right to suggest that most conservative voters or conservative policy thinkers ever supported it. I think what happened is that as soon as grassroots conservatives focused on the mandate, they hated it—and they were right to hate it, in my view–and both the politicians and that one outlier think tank responded to their sentiment."
Timothy Noah pointed out here in 2013 that it wasn't until 2011 that Heritage formally opposed its own idea, meaning it took Heritage two years to join the Tea Party in opposing ObamaCare:
'Heritage, in a 2011 amicus curiae brief submitted in support of the legal challenge to Obamacare, stated, “Heritage has stopped supporting any insurance mandate.” Heritage also said it had come to believe the individual mandate was unconstitutional—an interpretation later rejected, of course, by the Supreme Court.'
