#rsrh Obama, Obamacare, Obamandate.

Let’s go over this one. More. Time.

This is not 2004. Politicians may no longer assume that they can oppose, say, an individual mandate in one election cycle, then support the individual mandate in the next election cycle, then complain when a court rules against the individual mandate using the same argument that the politician did originally – and not have anybody notice any of this. Politicians may change their minds, too be sure. Nothing wrong with that; people change their minds all the time. But it’s expected that they note when they have changed their minds, and why.

Mind you, it’s entirely possible that the President never really changed his mind in the first place. After all, his original strategy with regard to Obamacare was to simply adopt whatever pile of steaming legislative feces that the Democratic Congress created, then take the credit accordingly. Only… it was a very large pile of steaming legislative feces. Larger than expected, in fact. And for some incomprehensible reason the American public was not particularly eager to accept Obamacare, no matter how much the President swore up and down that it was really the best thing since sliced bread, really, no fooling*. But President Obama did adopt Obamacare, and he did invest his personal reputation in its success, so he does have to grin and bear it when sarcastic mockers like myself gleefully point out that the only way that Judge Vinson could have been more reliant on our Constitutional Scholar-President’s argument against the individual mandate is if the judge had actually quoted a relevant formal legal opinion of the President’s. Not that we have anything like that, of course. In fact, now that I think about it… do we have any published scholarship by the President?

Any at all?

*Which is one reason why there was an attempt to redefine the very act of calling Obamacare ‘Obamacare’ as being ‘derogatory.’ Didn’t work, but they tried.