Posted on 04/02/2012 2:31:40 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Right before our eyes, American conservatism is becoming something very different from what it once was. Yet this transformation is happening by stealth because moderates are too afraid to acknowledge what all their senses tell them.
Last week’s Supreme Court oral arguments on health care were the most dramatic example of how radical tea partyism has displaced mainstream conservative thinking. It’s not just that the law’s individual mandate was, until very recently, a conservative idea. Even conservative legal analysts were insisting it was impossible to imagine the court declaring the health-care mandate unconstitutional, given its past decisions.
So imagine the shock when conservative justices repeatedly spouted views closely resembling the tweets and talking points issued by organizations of the sort funded by the Koch brothers. Don’t take it from me. Charles Fried, solicitor general for Ronald Reagan, told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein that it was absurd for conservatives to pretend that the mandate created a market in health care. “The whole thing is just a canard that’s been invented by the tea party . . .,” Fried said, “and I was astonished to hear it coming out of the mouths of the people on that bench.”
Staunchly conservative circuit judges Jeffrey Sutton and Laurence Silberman must have been equally astonished, since both argued that overturning the law would amount to judicial overreach. Yet moderate opinion bends over backward to act as if this is an intellectually close question...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Dear E.J.,
Let me correct you on at least one point,
you have not seen “radical Tea Partyism” yet.
Believe me, you will know it when it happens.
Tet68
Have a Koch and a smile!
Your edit to the title is on-target.
This piece is riddled with breathless panic.
"Conservative tea party" thinking generally can be described as that thinking which believes in Creator-endowed individual life, liberty, rights, and laws to protect those rights (as stated in the Declaration of Independence) and a "We, the People's" written Constitution which structured and severely limits government's coercive power over its "only KEEPERS" (Justice Story), "the People." That kind of "thinking" believes that America's future for children would be better if we rediscover and preserve the "radical" ideas of 1776 and 1787.
Perhaps Dionne doesn't fully appreciate the great gift of liberty those "radicals" of 1776 and 1787 provided for him. Or, perhaps, he just hasn't bothered to study their ideas at all.
[ “radical tea partyism “ ]
LoL... is this guy kidding or what?..
Talk about being bunched up in Obama shorts..
You want read about radicals “Rule for Radicals”(Alinsky) is the place..
You know “Saul Alinsky” the mentor of Obama and more than half the White Hut..
Go back to licking frozen railroad tracks, E.J.
At least you’re halfway competent at that.
You forgot to add the prefix “Left-Wing Lunatic” to E.J. Dionne, Jr.
Exactly. If all they wanted to do was extend insurance to the uninsured, which is what Medicaid is supposed to do, all they had to do was extend Medicaid. That would have taken a page or two, or five maybe. What are the other 2695 pages doing?
And people do get, I think, that those 2700 pages were not written by congress, and they weren't read by anyone in congress. Which means congress itself was usurped, which again means the "law" is illegitimate.
The government’s lead lawyer, in his summing up, tried to “turn up the violins” with reference after reference to “the blessings of liberty.”
Paul Clement, the masterful lead lawyer for the challengers, responded (paraphrasing) that it is a curious conception of liberty held by the law’s proponents: A law that forces you to do things you don’t want to do is pro-liberty?
Good one. What a waist of bandwidth to put this up.
I’ll agree after reading
that he is an enthusiastic supporter of Obamacare, but I’m not seeing him saying anything close to “impossible to imagine” (that it would be considered unconstitutional). One can say “that’s how it is, end of story”, as he does, but that still doesn’t rise to a statement of utter inviolate truth that Dionne here claims to exist.
To be clear, by beef is with Dionne’s almost certainly misleading statement that there are clear conservative statements that Obama is not just clearly Constitutional, but so clearly Constitutional that it’s simply “impossible to imagine”, that anyone, pondering any combination of (for example) history, law, public opinion, and commerce, would not agree.
This screed of denial takes your breath away.
Yeah : )
Is this E.J. evil? Just stupid? Every time I read his dreck, I can’t decide.
Drudge:
DID HE GET A LEAK?
OBAMA TAKES SHOT AT COURT
Does a bear take a leak in the woods?
Drudge:
DID HE GET A LEAK?
OBAMA TAKES SHOT AT COURT
my apologies for double posting ....things is glitzy
If so, the leaker was most likely Kagan.
Really?
Is that something like changing Congressional rules so that you can ram through a piece of unpopular legislation without a single vote from the other party?
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