Liberals from coast to coast have started the meme that John Roberts is looking to tear us down via the “long game". But his Obamacare ruling may signal something dramatically different on at least one major issue.
Chief Justice John Roberts is the talk of the town after he was the swing vote in a 5-4 ruling to affirm Obamacare, President Obama’s signature legislation, in a situation where the law being stricken down could have resulted in a November loss for the President. Now it looks like credible reports are stating that Roberts may have flipped his vote halfway through the process out of an interest of the long term legitimacy of the court:
In addition to private jostling within the Supreme Court, it appears that the public spotlight was a factor. The CBS report points to how Roberts pays attention to media coverage. With his court's reputation on the line, one source suggested that the chief justice became "wobbly" in the eyes of his conservative counterparts.
As the court made its historic Affordable Care Act ruling on Thursday, suspicions arose regarding Roberts being scared off by Justice Antonin Scalia. The Daily Beast highlighted one theory from a reader who clerked on an appellate court.
The idea that while a staunch conservative, Roberts is also interested in seeing the long term legitimacy of the court prevail was popular with the left, and for good reason...
A discussion on the legitimacy of the court would have started the moment the law was struck down – especially since the court’s 4 dissenters did not just strike down the individual mandate, as expected, but the entire legislation. Adam Winkler, writing for Huffington Post, examines his motives:
With this deft ruling, Roberts avoided what was certain to be a cascade of criticism of the high court. No Supreme Court has struck down a president's signature piece of legislation in over 75 years. Had Obamacare been voided, it would have inevitably led to charges of aggressive judicial activism. Roberts peered over the abyss and decided he didn't want to go there.
Roberts' decision was consistent with his confirmation hearings pledge to respect the co-equal branches of government, push for consensus, and reach narrow rulings designed to build broad coalitions on the Court. He promised to respect precedent. His jurisprudence, he said, would be marked by "modesty and humility" and protection of the precious institutional legitimacy of the Court.
There’s a fairly decent argument to be made that while Roberts personally may have been in favor of invalidating the mandate, he realized the impact of the of that ruling, and if that led to an Obama loss in November, it’s very possible Democrats would have made it long term mission to eventually weaken or end the institution. So it’s obvious that at least some portion of that line of thinking played into his choice – the idea that a court has a long term legacy and he doesn’t want to be looked at by history as the Chief Justice that led the Supreme Court right off the cliff.
While there’s talk of this being a nessessary choice so he can muster "political capitol” needed for future conservative rulings, the one place where liberals may take heart in this ruling could lie in marriage equality legislation that will certainly be brought before the court starting next term. The future of a Prop 8 challenge making it to the Supreme Court is murky, but we’re almost guarenteed to see the lawsuit against the Defense of Marriage Act make an appearance on the docket for next year, according to SCOTUSBlog:
Placing before the Supreme Court another huge cultural controversy, the House of Representatives’ Republican leaders on Friday afternoon asked the Justices to uphold the constitutionality of the 1996 federal law that limits all federal programs and benefits for marriage to legal unions of a man and a woman. This could set the stage for the Justices to take up the issue of same-sex marriage in their next Term, opening October 1. The new petition is here; the case does not yet have a docket number assigned.
The argument for the meteoric rise in public acceptance of LGBT marriage and the effect that the President's endorsement of same sex marriage has been pretty extensively covered, even by this blog. See my article here for more detail, but for the sake of space, we're going to operate under the assumption that public support levels will continue to rise at at least some rate for the foreseeable future, and it is now a mainstream position, supported by polling numbers.
So, if we can all generally agree that Roberts places some priority on the way history sees his court, does that lead to the possibility that he sees the logic in siding with the liberal wing on marriage equality? He certainly understands the way that history looks at those that stood in the way of interracial marriage, and we've already examined his possible historical motives on his Obamacare ruling. It seems to me that if he is so concerned about the legacy of the “Roberts Court”, this would be a much more obvious place to make a stand than unpopular health care legislation. Does Roberts want his court to be the final one that stood in the way of a major civil rights victory that is all but certain to any but the most blind? Or could he craft the ultimate legacy and join a select group of American justices that can make a true claim to pushing our country forward?
If Roberts is playing the “Long Game”, as some suggest, that may not be the worst thing for Democrats. Roberts does seem to understand that history doesn’t look kindly on politically and religiously fueled extremism, even if it took him a while to realize that his court was starting to become a rubber stamp for those extreme positions. Now it's time to put that theory to the test - will the Roberts Court be the last court that denies LGBT Americans the right to marry those we love?
On the heels of one of the GOP’s biggest political losses in more than a decade, Republicans have responded with a message: we still want to “Let them Die”.
In case you descended into a coma for the last four days, you’ve heard that the Supreme Court, on a 5-4 decision, affirmed Obamacare almost in full, including the individual mandate that may have been key to the success of the legislation in practice. The affirmation was a huge blow to conservatives nationwide, who had begun the end zone dance roughly last week and even began celebrating like fans of a sports team that just won a championship while Chief Justice John Roberts was reading the actual findings of the court, where he affirmed the legislation with the four left-leaning justices on a government taxation power argument. CNN and FOX also managed to blow their loads prematurely, hedging their bets on a dramatic setback for the Obama administration and barely able to contain their glee, and Republicans nationwide set “delete” button speed records and learned a valuable lesson in pre-scheduling Tweets.
The “unexpected” (to put it mildly) setback put the Republican Party on it’s heels. An Amber Alert should have been issued for Mitt Romney, who didn’t make a statement on the legislation for over an hour after the ruling, and the resulting day long social media extravaganza (buzzfeed.com has a decent summary) confirmed that apparently, there was just no plan for this to happen, so messaging wouldn’t be required. But, the dust has settled, and it appears that the far-right Christian warriors of our country are going all-in with the message that Obamacare must be repealed, and replacing it isn’t exactly at the top of the priority list.
WALLACE: I just want to ask, what specifically are you going to do to provide universal coverage to the 30 million people who are uninsured?
MCCONNELL: That is not the issue. The question is, how can you go step by step to improve the American health care system. … We’re not going to turn the American health care system into a Western European system.
While those that paid attention always knew the “replace” half of “repeal and replace” was as sincere as a Kardashian marriage, the fact that Republican leaders are okay with publicly stating they want to rip life saving treatments away from millions of Americans, or give companies the ability to discriminate based on your bad luck in getting colon cancer, is a pretty stunning thing as a messaging strategy. Especially for a party that loves to label themselves as the the political wing of mainstream American Christianity, says PoliticusUSA:
The conservative Christian agenda is rapidly becoming as far-removed from Christ’s teachings as the Sun is from the Earth, and as the country devolves into a hate-fest toward the poor and impoverished, it is little wonder the rest of the world views American Christianity as little more than a bastardization of Ayn Rand ideology. The level of hate and greed that is becoming the hallmark of the religious right is a disease that is being transmitted, ironically, through churches all across America, and it never ceases to amaze humanists how a Christian adherent can clutch a bible to their bosom while working tirelessly to strip assistance from the poor, and worse, condemning them to poor health and an early death because they consider something like affordable health insurance a privilege.
Indeed, the thought that this morning, thousands of church congregations may very well lead their prayers by asking God to repeal Obamacare while at the same time calling themselves followers of someone who spent quite a bit of time healing the sick, is nauseating and so twisted that it’s hard to comprehend for anyone who has a brain cell. The chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party takes the hypocrisy a step further by calling for a second American civil war and justifying armed rebellion as a “Godly” action:
To resist by all means that are right in the eyes of God is not rebellion or insurrection, it is patriotic resistance to invasion.
May all of us fall on our faces before the Heavenly Judge, repent of our sins, and humbly cry out to Him for mercy on our country. And, may godly courageous leaders rise up in His wisdom and power to lead us in displacing the criminal invaders from their seats and restore our constitutional republic.
Of course, the Republican Party has made the practice of jumping the shark further to the right almost a campaign plank in this cycle, but this time may be the first time where virtually no dissent has been voiced, even by the so-called “moderate” Republican wing. McConnell’s statement of the Republican position moving forward no longer tries to couch the fact that they just don’t give a shit if you die because health insurance is too expensive, or you can’t get insured because of past conditions. Health insurance is a privilege, sort of like a BMW or a mansion, that should only be attainable by those who have proven their self-worth via bank account balances. That’s their version of the American way, and the way they interpret the teachings of Jesus Christ, a man who would fit the description of “Community Organizer” perfectly. America is still the ONLY industrialized country in the world to not provide citizens with universal health care via a public option – apparently, the entire rest of the world missed the mark when declaring access to quality health care a fundamental human right, not a optional payroll deduction when you are lucky enough to have a job.
So now that Obamacare is guaranteed to take effect for the foreseeable future (no matter what GOPers want you to think), the discussion will begin to shift to what Obamacare does for Americans. While the Affordable Care Act generally polls poorly among voters, every one of the major portions of the legislation has popular support – at commanding levels:
61 percent of respondents favored allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until age 26.
72 percent of respondents wish to maintain the requirement that companies with more than 50 workers provide health insurance for their employees.
82 percent of respondents favored banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions
Some Republicans, such as Allen West, may have recognized this and initially tested the waters with forms of legislation that would allow popular provisions to stay in force while acting to damage the President’s credibility via a political loss. But it’s clear with the last two days of Republican talk that nothing but a full repeal is an option. While the ACA may stay unpopular with the Republican base, the second chance that the President and Democrats are now able to take advantage of, and the media has been highlighting already, is the highly popular tenants of the law. With polling support for these issues already high across the board, there is virtually no chance that support for the legislation will go down over the next few months, and there is a very good chance that support will go up due to the renewed focus on tying each part back to the legislation as a whole.
Over the next four months, the President and Democrats across the nation are going to be able to offer a very clear cut choice: are you really interested in voting for a party that wants to re-instate the right for companies to deny people based on pre-existing conditions? Do you really want to take young adults away from their parents health plans at a time when high quality jobs are so hard to find? Do you really want to stand with the Republican Party and say in unison, “LET THEM DIE!”? Because now, you’re not just taking legislative inaction on the issue, you are supporting an active campaign to rip affordable health insurance out of the hands of millions of Americans who have never had the ability to get it before; a cruel and morally abhorrent action that could only be justified by the moral compass of a playground bully.
My bet’s is that most Americans aren’t interested in this “Atlas Shrugged” inspired indifference to their fellow citizens, and this Obamacare decision will be a long term win for Democrats as well as a long term win for Americans everywhere. But if we do choose the wrong road and hand the keys to Romney and crew in 2012, how do we deserve anything else as a country? The choice is clear, high-profile, and provides no grey areas – this election has become more important than ever. Do we still believe in helping each other, or are we really the nation that is so concerned about a couple percentage points on a tax return that we’d rather just let those in poverty die painfully?
