…Don’t.
There is, no doubt, a result that will allow us to rack up a maximum partisan point total. It may not, in fact, be the “light Obamacare on fire, then urinate on the ashes” option. I do not care. It is a foul and dishonest law that was conceived in arrogance, nurtured on spite, and delivered via trickery and disdain. Killing it dead will be a meritorious act – so let it be killed, for the sake of principle. Which is a good and sufficient reason to do anything, cynicism be damned.
And if we don’t get sufficiently rewarded for standing on principle? Well, nobody ever said that life was fair.
Moe Lane
(Post that sparked this thought here.)
I agree 100% Moe. If the Supremes don’t uproot the whole thing, the GOP better. Thge central plank of the GOP needs to be the total repeal of ObamaCare. I don’t care what kind of contortions Romney has to go through, but he needs to keep repeating his line that RomneyCare may be OK for Massachusetts but ObamaCare is not OK for the entire country. No fixing or tweaking, it all needs to go.
Dittos.
There is only one good reason for SCOTUS to declare Obamacare unconstitutional, and that is if Obamacare aka ACA is unconstitutional. Well, Obamacare is unconstitutional, and the SCOTUS arguments this week underscored that.
So I think SCOTUS will do the right thing and strike the law down, and further would likely strike it all down. That would be the correct legal result.
“Could a Supreme Court decision striking down the individual mandate in Obamacare – if not the entire law – actually work to Barack Obama’s favor in November?” Possibly. He still deserves to be fired for his pathetic economic performance, partisan and extreme positions, and his poor / thinskinned / lead-from-behind leadership, but there is one less egregious burr in the saddle to remind you to vote him out.
So what. Killing Bin Laden helped Obama gain some fightin-tough cred. Glad he did it, sorry it wasnt 10 years earlier.
OTOH, you could argue this puts the issue back in play – and its more of a jump ball at that point. It also guts Obama’s signature achievement.
He’s got stimulus – spending lots and lots and lots and lots of money. oooh, that’ll go over well. and he’s got Obamacare. and he’s got … um, er, ahhh, hmmm… urrrr, ugggg…
The Court must strike the whole law if they strike the mandate. Having all admitted that they have not and don’t intend to read the whole law, the assumption must be made that if they strike the mandate, it will make so many other parts of the law inoperative or disconnected that those parts then could become challengeable and the Court would have a steady stream of cases dealing with those innumerable sections.
The only way to prevent this without striking the whole law would be to actually line through bits in all 2700 pages which would require an editing task that the Court appears to have no stomach for.
Well, Tbone, if you’re postulating a lazy Court, there’s another alternative that’s even less work, requiring no analysis whatever beyond the minimum necessary to write an opinion.
“It’s all good.” Uphold it, lock, stock, and barrel. No need to examine anything, no work involved at all.
Which is what I’m still predicting.
I’m actually not all that surprised about the liberal punditocracy’s view, because given the choice between following precedent and following the Constitution, SCOTUS will invariably follow precedent. And there’s just a wealth of really bad Commerce Clause precedent already on the books. And while it’s hard to come up with a limiting principle that allows this, but disallows virtually anything else, it’s also hard to come up with one that disallows this, that also doesn’t overturn at least partially Raich or Wickard.
How is Obamacare (living or dead) anything but a liability for Obama?
Think of it as a variation on waving the bloody shirt: ‘Obama came up with Obamacare, that was struck down. Do you REALLY want to give him another 4 years to do as he pleases?’
No severability clause. It all goes.
Especially after that epic questioning session, if the SCOTUS upholds Obamacare (under the “Yes it’s unConstitutional, but this is soooo important that we’ll let you get away with it THIS time” clause which they have used before) they’ll have given up any vestige of moral authority they had.