Former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan told conservatives Friday that Obamacare helped President Obama defeat Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, decrying the “empty promises” of the law that hadn’t yet been implemented.

“This was our challenge that Mitt Romney and I had in this last election,” Ryan said in a speech at the annual Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, DC. “We had to argue against the promise and the rhetoric of President Obama. The great soaring rhetoric, all of the empty promises.”

“Remember in his first term, in his first two years, he passed his program but didn’t implement his program,” he said. “Now in the second term, we are seeing it implemented and it’s pretty darn ugly. We are seeing the assault on our liberties.”

The Republican congressman from Wisconsin and House Budget Committee chairman went on to argue that the Affordable Care Act was an example of “big government assaulting our First Amendment rights” when it comes to religious liberty.

He cited the mandate under the law that employer health insurance plans include contraception without co-payments for female employees — a rule that was announced early in 2012 and became an issue in the presidential campaign.

“Obamacare says that if you believe in the social teaching of your Church, if you disagree, you know, with abortifacients, abortion-inducing drugs, it doesn’t matter,” Ryan said. “This is what the federal government is demanding.” (The rule he was referring to involves contraceptives, which prevent — not terminate — pregnancies.)

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