Posted on 06/30/2012 10:23:54 AM PDT by EternalVigilance
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, I have noticed a curious phenomenon in which some conservative commentators seem to be so desperate to find a silver lining to the ruling that they have abandoned all logic. Consider George Will, who wrote a column in the aftermath of the ruling that actually puts forward the argument that we conservatives should take the fact that Roberts didn’t rely upon the commerce clause as evidence that there might be some constitutional limitation on the federal government after all. That would be a wonderful aspect of this ruling, if they had overturned the law! Instead, what we have is a monstrous precedent set in which the court re-writes a law in order to make it constitutional by imputing into the act a tax that had not existed in fact. This is an unmitigated disaster. I have heard a few who have noted hopefully that this ruling will energize the conservative base, and while that’s probably the case, I’m not certain I am so concerned about the political fall-out as I am about the long-run constitutional implications. You see, the political situation may permit us to repair the law, but it doesn’t permit us to immediately repair the damage done to the body of case law upon which future courts will rely as precedents in their own rulings.
The other thing I have read is the bizarre notion put forward by the National Review that what Roberts did was more conservative because he exercised judicial restraint in not striking down the law. Balderdash! Once you realize the legal contortions through which Roberts arrived at this ruling, it makes no sense whatever to claim he hadn’t acted as an activist. The convoluted logic by which he found a tax in a law that plainly states it does not contain one is an onerous breech of any notion of strict construction. I cannot conceive of any intellectually rigorous examination of this ruling by which this can be seen as a positive by anybody who is in favor of strict construction. When it came to the Anti-Injunction section of the ruling, it was held not to have been a tax, but just a few pages later, as Roberts performed mental gymnastics, he declared it was a tax after all.
On Thursday evening, Mark Levin summarized the matter better than anybody I’ve heard speak to this matter, in part because he understands the legalities in question, his Landmark Legal Foundation having been a participant in this case, but also because he knew Justice Roberts years ago when they both worked in the Reagan administration. Levin’s critique of the decision mirrors most of my own, and indeed, there was one aspect I hadn’t considered until Levin led me to it. That premise led me to yet another that I don’t believe Levin has yet realized in full. What one must understand is that this ruling is an unmitigated disaster, and no search for some alleged silver lining can repair it.
What Justice Roberts actually did was to expand the definition of what constitutes a permissible tax . Congress is permitted to levy only certain forms of tax, and this one doesn’t fit the definition of any of them. In dispensing with that issue, Roberts held that it didn’t matter, and that words don’t matter, and that plain-written legislative language doesn’t matter. He also ignored the context of the law, and the intent of Congress. One version of this bill had an actual tax, but Congress could not pass it in that form, so Congress altered it to contain no tax. What John Roberts did was to ignore the actual text of the legislation, and to say that the labels didn’t matter: If it looks like a tax, it is one. The problem with this is that it does nothing to restrain Congress from levying new taxes, and ignores the definitions of what sort of taxes Congress may enact. This is a wholesale extension of Congressional taxing authority because what Roberts ruled with respect to the particular form of the tax, insofar as the question of whether Congress had met the constitutional limits on whether it could impose it was effectively: “Close enough.”
That is offered to us as evidence of John Roberts’ alleged strict construction? Close enough? What this means, effectively, is that if Congress enacts some tax that it has questionable constitutional authority to levy, smiling John will be there to tell us it’s “close enough,” with every leftist monster on the court standing behind him to uphold it.
Ladies and gentlemen, there exists no silver lining to this ruling. All of the crackpot, delusional happy-talk from some conservatives in media is designed to make you feel better. You’ve just lost both arms and legs in a brutal assault, but they tell you, you should consider this a happy opportunity to enjoy the comforts of a new wheelchair and mouth-controlled joystick. You’ve just lost your family to a violent home-invasion, but, they tell you, you should view this as a chance to start over. The intention here is to keep you calm. The intention now is to serve a political end, while your country is dying around you. Your most sacred law, the US Constitution, has been crumpled and tossed into the ash-bin of history, and you are told you should do a happy-dance to the calming sounds of “Oh Happy Days.”
I’d like you to inventory the whole of the conservatives to whom you listen, or whose columns and opinions you read, and I want you to take care to note which of them are imploring you to consider some silver lining. They are lying. They have good intentions, many of them, and they have contorted themselves into a formless spaghetti of reasoning in order to find some good in this awful plate of refuse you’ve been handed. Don’t surrender your minds by sprinkling Parmesan on it and wolfing it down. Are there some limited political opportunities as a result of this decision? Yes, but they require the fulfillment of a whole laundry-list of “if-then” statements.
IF Mitt Romney is elected, and IF he doesn’t sell us out, and IF we hold the House, and IF we recapture the Senate(and at least 60 votes) and IF the moderates in either house don’t screw us, and IF Boehner and McConnell have the guts to do in repealing what the villains Reid and Pelosi did in passing the ACA, and IF they can deliver a bill to President Romney’s desk, and IF John Roberts and the other liberals on the court can be replaced, and IF Mitt Romney can replace them with actual strict constructionists, THEN you might have a chance to undo this damage. IF any of these don’t happen, your constitution is effectively dead as a restraint on government.
The danger of self-imposed delusions is that you come to believe them, like a pathological liar. It is by this form of self-delusion that we’ve permitted our country to lose its roots in reverence for the Constitution. We cannot defeat the statists by pretending this isn’t the disaster that it is, if we can defeat them at all. I believe some talking heads know this, but do not want to yield to what will come in the wake of such a monstrosity. They’re hanging on, stubbornly telling us that the stench of smoke reaching our nostrils is merely an air freshener of a novel scent. Rather than screaming “Fire,” and warning conservative Americans that the house is ablaze, the barn is wiped out, the surviving farm animals running loose in a frantic bid to stay ahead of the flames licking at their heels, many are now telling you that it’s all okay. It will be fine.
>> a logical answer.
I make my living in logic, but I’m also married.
Romney = Obama Lite?!
bfl
I don't.
Not voting at all at the top of the ticket (I assume that's what you mean by "blank") is the equivalent of being nothing, gone, disappeared, non-existent. Each vote is like an oar in the water of a huge ship. Not voting is withdrawing your oar (so to speak) and not using it at all when you're called upon to help set the course for this ship of state.
I believe that informed folks like us have a DUTY to vote, even when we don't want to. To go blank at the top of the ticket while voting down-ticket would be, to me, a dereliction of duty. Men didn't fight and die for us to suddenly become non-existent at the ballot box.
Enough third party votes -- official ones, not myriad write-ins that could easily invalidate those ballots on the slightest pretense, but marking the ballot at the top of the ticket for any name other than Romney or Obama so that is officially counted in the final tally, would mean VOLUMES to both God and man. VOLUMES.
To God, it would mean that we feared Him more than we feared a mere mortal Obama, and to God it would mean that we loved Him more than we loved our illusions of "pragmatism."
To man, it would mean one more oar's pulling power away from a leftward course, because both Obama AND Romney are heading left.
The term "voting against" is a euphemism for "voting FOR this in order to prevent THAT from winning." Mathematically, there is NO SUCH THING as voting "against," a fact instinctively grasped by those so disheartened that they are willing to just not vote at all at the top of the ticket. When we vote, we can only vote FOR something; the problem with voting FOR Romney in order to vote "against" Obama, is that we'd end up with Romney and those who voted for him to vote "against" Obama would learn, one year into a Romney term, that the only thing that counts is what they voted FOR, because Obama and ABO would be ancient history.
A third party vote has the power to split the end numbers into a plurality that would necessarily weaken the victor. Witness Bill Clinton, whose 43% plurality meant a full 57% of voters essentially thought he stunk. Two years later, Clinton was steamrolled by the Republican Revolution in Congress; the Republican Revolution would probably never have happened if Clinton had won with a majority or if HW had won.
A third party vote forfeits having any voice in influencing whether Obama or Romney wins -- the vote is absolutely neutral on that front, mathematically and materially. HOWEVER, a third party vote at the top of the ticket is the ONLY way you can use that vote to help the conservatives you've voted for down-ticket. Enough third party votes could potentially make it so whichever menace wins, Romney or Obama, takes office with it ON RECORD that nearly two in three Americans rejected him. If the winner happened to be Obama, Obama would be deeply humiliated, scorned, mocked, and vulnerable, especially as the dynamics for Conservatives would be immeasurably strengthened in the Republican party as moderates saw Romney LOSE.
So in fact, a blank or third party vote would mean CONSIDERABLE to both God and man.
I have a responsibility to vote, even at the top of the ticket. I will be voting FOR a plurality, and the only way I can do that is to vote for an official, on-the-ballot third party candidate.
Absolutely wonderful post.
I want whichever authoritarian government statist who wins, Obama or Romney, to be as weak and vulnerable as possible. In order to vote for that, I must forfeit any influence over which of the two menaces wins, but the pay-off is that my on-the-ballot official third-party vote (guaranteed not to disqualify my ballot, as a write-in might) will count toward a split vote plurality, and a plurality win will weaken and hurt the next president -- a good thing since either one is an enemy of freedom and limited government conservatism.
As a matter of strategy, I will be voting FOR a plurality. It's the ONLY way I can use my vote at the top of the ticket to help all the conservatives I'll be voting for down-ticket.
It sounds nice but it is mistaken. The hard cold truth is you're HIRING a new one. No matter how much you wish it was simply firing the old guy, no matter how much you wish you could vote against Obama, you and every American who votes lacks that option -- you can only vote FOR a different candidate to prevent Obama from winning. The price of Romney, especially risking a Romney landslide which would quickly morph from "firing Obama" into a "popular mandate for Romney's progressive style of governing" -- is so steep and so risky as to be a losing proposition.
Yet every one of us here has a duty to vote. There is a better, smarter, alternative: forfeit any influence in deciding Coke over Pepsi, and vote for a plurality to weaken the victory of whichever menace wins, as either way a menace is going to be in the White House. That is what I will be doing by voting third party at the top of the ticket in order to help all the conservatives I'll be voting for down-ticket.
We all should be more afraid of the message that would be perceived if we elected Romney on a landslide.
Because it would be perceived as a popular mandate for all of Romney's liberalism. Just ask English FReeper gzzimlich what happens when a "conservative" party starts rationalizing abandoning its principles in the name of voting for the "lesser of two evils."
“JR - the worst part is that even if ObamaCare is repealed - the legal precedent is still there that the taxing power can be used to coerce social behavior and manadatory purchases of good and services from private companies as dicatated by the Govt under force of law.
What Roberts did yesterday was “FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM’ the USA as we knew it.
Many people have no idea the disaster Roberts unleashed”
That’s a good post. I thought almost the same things. However you put it really well into words. some morons even here are telling me that I”m being negative! lol what idiots.
No, what you are confused about is your wild hallucination that Romney is one whit better than Obozo except for Muffie's trust fund and contracts and taxpayer money for Myth's cronies. The tyranny will be the same and only that handful of spoiled rich brat cronies (D or R) will differ.
Furthermore, Myth Romney's nomination is quite enough of a disaster for the GOP and America. His election would deprive the USA of a future and the GOP of any pretense of relevance.
By posting on FR, you pose as a conservative. You may even imagine that you are a conservative. Supporting Myth Romney, lifelong leftist spoiled brat is no better than supporting his father Brainwashed George, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, John Vliet Lindsay (who at least was honest enough to formally register as a Demonrat), Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (who left the GOP being driven out as Myth should have been), Lincoln Chaffee (ditto), and the rest of the spoiled leftist brat set who still infest some minor sectors of the "GOP." See spoiled little witch (sp.?) Christie Todd ("It's My Party, too!) Whitman.
Not satisfied that this monied trash has an ancestral preference (Civil War era???) for great, great, great, grand daddy's ancestral party, you are eager to elect one to be POTUS.
For folks like you, there is good news of a minor sort rising in the fashionable hills of Northwest Connecticut. Its bame is State Senator Andrew Roraback. Its family includes a famously successful ancestor who was state GOP chairman when, in the 1920s the CT GOP controlled about 325 of 350 seats in the CT General Assembly and a cousin or aunt, Katie Roraback, a major trial attorney for the ACLU, the Black Panther murder defendants at New Haven, and all things fashionably communist. Leftist excuse for a former GOP Congresswoman Nancy Johnson is just soooooo excited over Andrew Roraback who gets sexually excited over abortion, protection of faggotry posing as marriage and just about every other fashionable social cause (in his social set of Yale alumni of the early 1990s. Lowell Weicker will probably see Roraback as a potential vindication of Lowell Weicker.
In a now all too familiar scenario, Roraback, funded by obscene amounts of GOP-E $$$, is opposed by Linda Wilson Foley (pretty blonde ostensible Catholic but a babykilling enthusiast) who is otherwise conservative and supported by former Governor Jailbird John Rowland (a turncoat on the babies to please the GOP-E lest he be regarded as tooooo Catholic) and who is being investigated by another federal grand jury and two other conservatives. Guess who is favored. Clue: GOP-E scumbag. But, hey, that's the kind of GOP you want or you would know better than to support Myth Romney for anything but federal prison.
I know a lot of things you don't know. Have you stocked up on those asbestos undies yet???
If you loved CJ John Roberts' craven sellout last Thursday (Oh, if I don't save Obozocare, I will actually be CRITICIZED!!!), just wait until you see the trash that Romney will appoint to huzzahs and greetings from the brainless in the GOP Senate caucus.
No one will ever be able to credibly accuse Myth Romney of any sellouts, craven or otherwise, because he never believed in a single legitimately conservative principle in his utterly useless life. Romney = Obozo =Moloch = Obozo = Romney = same old POS, etc.
Somehow, I have every faith in JimRob that this website and his soul are not for sale. That crappy line of yours may intimidate spineless GOP-Es whom you enthusiastically support like Myth Romney. It does not begin to reach actual conservatives.
Ride the lightning, each and every one of you who have so little principle as to support Obozo in whiteface with an R after its name.
See #391, quisling.
I read your tagline. So, you are supporting the ‘all or nothing man’. Well, within three years the people will see what results from such a position. Sadly, we should have seen what Hoefling’s all or nothing means in the abortion issues, since he was even opposed to the partial birth abortion ban because it did not ban all abortions. Now we get to see that same all or nothing applied to allow little barry bastard commie to continue in power, with the accompanying gaggle of holderesque thugs and their globalist agenda.
There is nothing positive as to what Roberts did. Its a disaster beyond words.
The only thing though I think might happen though is that Obama will have a far weaker hand in trying to repeal the Bush tax cuts now that we know the truth about ObamaCare.
unkus:
Somehow, I have every faith in JimRob that this website and his soul are not for sale. That crappy line of yours may intimidate spineless GOP-Es whom you enthusiastically support like Myth Romney. It does not begin to reach actual conservatives.
Ride the lightning, each and every one of you who have so little principle as to support Obozo in whiteface with an R after its name.
I said this and you make statements like that?
Well it >is< paid for by donations.
unkus:
Somehow, I have every faith in JimRob that this website and his soul are not for sale. That crappy line of yours may intimidate spineless GOP-Es whom you enthusiastically support like Myth Romney. It does not begin to reach actual conservatives.
You sure like to kiss certain people’s a$$.
This is the key to evaluating a hypothetical Romney Presidency.
The Mitt Haters claim to be certain that Romney is a genuine leftist only pretending to be more conservative. They say that Romney's "default shape" (as you put it) is collectivistic.
I disagree.
You call this "self delusion", I call it "my opinion".
Even if this is true, it is certainly also true that Obama is not a conservative. What else is almost certainly true is that either Romney or Obama will win the election in November.
So the claim that Romney is not a conservative does not answer the real question which is "Will America, more likely than not, be substantially better off with Romney elected in November rather than Obama?"
I think the obvious answer to this question is "Yes." whatever label you apply to Romney.
If you genuinely believe what you say here then this is a stupid thing to believe.
If you are saying something you do not believe to be true (as seems more likely to me) then obviously you are a liar and this is a despicable thing to be.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.