Posted on 07/01/2012 4:12:25 PM PDT by centurion316
The Supreme Court’s health-care ruling is welcome because it is a compromise. The justices overcame their differences, defusing political conflict and channeling it into the election where it belongs.
But the ruling is historic because it is a Compromise — a crisis-averting pact across lines of ideology, party and region, the likes of which we have not seen since pre-Civil War days.
Four of the court’s five Republican-appointed conservatives wanted to strike down the Democratic Party’s most cherished legislative achievement since the Great Society, dealing an election-year political blow to President Obama.
Their legal arguments were hardly specious, but they were novel enough to be plausibly branded partisan and opportunistic — possibly in a dissenting opinion by four liberal Democratic appointees on the court that would have become a de facto Obama campaign manifesto.
For Chief Justice John Roberts, the temptation to join the other four GOP appointees, consequences be damned, must have been strong. Surely this lifelong conservative has little use for “Obamacare.”
Yet he is also a student of history, especially pre-Civil War America; his intellectual biography of Daniel Webster won Harvard’s undergraduate writing prize in 1976. ...
Roberts grasped two realities. First: In a great national debate, no side has a monopoly on wisdom. Second: Conservatism has no future if the country slides into division and dysfunction.
And so, instead of standing on the legal principles articulated by his conservative brethren, Roberts sacrificed some of those precepts and persuaded some court liberals to reciprocate.
This was no capitulation. Roberts dealt from strength, holding four aces named Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
What emerged was less a legal opinion than a plan for national cohesion, on terms remarkably favorable to conservatives.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
As Britt Hume pointed out: "The dogs don't like the dog food". We need to point this out to the American people strongly and often.
-- Ayn Rand.
Exactly the fawning press Roberts sought with his decision to screw the country. Hope he rots in hell.
That’s a great quote. In a similar vein, I quote myself:
“It is not a virtue that you are able to compromise with fools.”
Someone needs to tell the WaPo that none of the “Compromises” averted a Civil War.
You don't compromise with the U.S. Constitution. Eroding the Constitution is eroding the liberty of the American people. A compromise with the socialists is always a move to the left toward socialist tyranny.
ha ha ha projection!
After the Civil War you had the “Compromise of 1877” when the Democrats allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to become President and the Republicans handed over the South to the Democratic Party. (Slightly exaggerating because much of the South was already under Democrat rule.)
These are not realities; these are liberal tropes. Moreover, does not the WaPo consider that the job of the Supreme Court their ONLY job, really is to preserve and defend the Constitution? Or that in this effort, it is the Court's DUTY to divide those who love and support the Constitution from those who hate and revile it? And on the matter of dysfunction, without the Constitution as our fundamental law, the nation is ALREADY fundamentally and profoundly dysfunctional? It's also interesting that (at least in the quoted portion) the WoPo never deigns to mention the Constitution at all.
So, the powers that be are betting on the fact that they have another 40 years to milk the American public...
So, the powers that be are betting on the premise that they have another 40 years to milk the American public...
Politician’s are supposed to compromise - not justices.
Imagine if a Congress and a President passed a law saying that every American must attend a Christian Church service every Sunday or pay a fine. The Supreme Court says that due to the 1st amendment, government can’t mandate anyone go to church, but they can impose a tax on those who don’t. Huh?
Yes, it was a compromise the likes of which has not been seen since pre-Civil War days. John Roberts can rest assured that he will take his place in legal history beside the authors of the Dred Scott decision.
Yep. He did his duty for the ruling class, and now harvests their praise. The nation? Oh. Well. Hey, there's an election coming up, chumps, deal with it. I'm off to Malta for a well-deserved vacation.
It’s not averting a crisis, it’s gearing one up.
They did not “overcome their differences”.
” persuaded some court liberals to reciprocate.”
Bullshit. Roberts was all by himself on the Commerce Clause, which is supposedly the gain for conservatives in the decision. The doctrinaire leftists on the Court gave not an inch on that issue and specifically dissented on the Commerce Clause ruling.
As usual, the left compromised none at all and the right signed away the house but claim they cleverly achieved some nebulous moral victory.
Vested with unlimited power as the SCOTUS Chief Justice, John Roberts managed to overreach: he passed a law the Congress had not passed. Four conservative Justices called him on it, saying in effect, “You’re on your own.” I say, “Too clever by half, and clearly unconstitutional.”
The five-member majority view effectively rewrites existing law. It’s the first time since before the 1942 case Wickard v. Filburn, a precedent that was affirmed in the 2005 case Gonzales v. Raich, that the Supreme Court has placed a limit on Congress’s authority make national economic regulation that substantially affects interstate commerce.,
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/chuck-schumer-john-roberts-broke-promise-commerce-clause-health-care-wickard-filburn-gonzales-raich.php
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I hope we don't realize the good he has done until Nov 7th.
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