Maybe not. I think he replaced O'Connor. Therefore, Roberts was not GW Bush's first choice. He was forced to turn to Roberts.
Harriett Miers would have gone along with the conservatives. She was a fairly solid pro-life vote, iirc. One of the arguments against her was that she wasn't very creative, and would have been a follower, not a leader.
What we can say about Roberts is that he is devious. He gets it both ways: gets to say the mandate is not viable under the commerce clause, which is what courts and conservatives were saying. So, he says that if the administration says the funding mechanism is a tax, then, despite the democrat's arguments in Congress, it is a tax.
Does this means we'll have a new line item on our paychecks: FICA, MED, and now Federal Health Care?
Is that what this means?
Also, everyone with any sense knows big business was dying to get out from under health care requirements. Big business also wanted cheap labor in America (Arizona ruling).
Could Roberts simply be a corporate interests vote?
Perhaps the worst part of this decision is that it stands for the proposition that the Supreme Court has no interest in the TRUTH.
Obama and the democrats insisted that this was not a TAX. They even argued that in court, but in the final analysis it was clear that unless the mandate was a TAX then it could not be constitutional even by the most liberal interpretation of the law. Then they changed tunes and claimed that it wasn’t a “penalty” but a tax. The Supreme Court then accepted that argument, ignored all the LIES that the Obama attorneys had said in court and then ruled on the basis that it was a TAX.
I think Daryl Issa should call a hearing on the procedures that the Supreme Court used on this case. He should call each and every Justice before his committee and ask them directly “DID YOU EVEN READ THIS LAW BEFORE YOU DECLARED IT CONSTITUTIONAL”.
If they are called, they will LIE. They don’t give a damn about the TRUTH.
We no longer are a Constitutional republic. We are an Oligarchy and a Dictatorship.
WE THE PEOPLE have no contract with this government.