I like Jonathan Cohn's opinion in The New Republic on the health care law under scrutiny by the SCOTUS. Imagine the highest court in the nation, continuing to make 5-4 decisions on critical matters based on politics... Bush v Gore (5-4); Citizens United v FEC (5-4).
Yet it could very well come down to a 5-4 split on President Obama's health care law.
Despite the conservative public rhetoric, it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination at all, to understand that the ACA does not expand government powers -- Medicare and Social Security require participation for all Americans.
And so, Cohn notes that, "The plaintiffs (conservatives) have conceded that a universal health insurance program would be constitutional if, instead of penalizing people who decline to get insurance, the government enacted a tax and refunded the money to people who had insurance."
That should at least be mildly amusing, because it reflects the politics of Mitt Romney, where the argument changes depending upon the audience being addressed. If it's to rile up libertarians, the conservative message is that government cannot take your rights away. But if it's to address Constitutional issues with the SCOTUS, it's now a semantic question of whether a penalty is a tax.
What conservatives instead should be worried about, is an activist court (whose members are appointed, not voted in) that overrules Congress and the people who elected representatives to Congress. In an interview on C-SPAN, Chief Justice Roberts once said, "If they don't like what we're doing, it's more or less just too bad." -- I think that's a perfect statement for modern America.
If a liberal-minded justice had said that, conservatives would be howling like mad wolves, looking for blood. But because conservatives enjoy a majority in the SCOTUS, they see it as a reflection of winners versus losers.
Again, a perfect statement for modern America.
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