The Roberts Trap Is Sprung

American Thinker ^ | January 2, 2014 | Bill Dunne

[Kaslin]

One of the most overlooked aspects of the year just ended is the vindication of Chief Justice John Roberts -- a vindication that showed up as the national catastrophe known as ObamaCare got rolling. Roberts may have also doomed Hillary Clinton's chance to live in the White House again.

The chief justice, an appointee of President George W. Bush and reputedly a constitutionalist in his jurisprudence, set his diabolical trap (diabolical to Democrats) on June 28, 2012, when he joined with the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Conservatives and Republicans across the land were apoplectic. But in hindsight, it appears that Roberts actually saved the Republican Party from going into a death spiral and imperiled the Democrats instead. This suggests amazing foresight, but it wouldn't be the only instance.

For example, Tevi Troy, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, made a remarkable prophecy a year and a half before the Court's decision. It was soon after the November 2010 midterm elections, in which Democrats in Congress and in state legislatures suffered huge losses. In an article in Commentary magazine, Troy wrote:

The Pyrrhic victory Democrats secured for themselves [when President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law] may prove not to have been a victory at all but rather an ever-roiling, ongoing, and recurring act of political and ideological self-destruction.

How's that for prescience?

When the Supreme Court ruling came down, a shocked conservative historian, Paul Rahe, cited as a cause the PR pressure that President Barack Obama had been exerting on the Court in the fevered weeks leading up to the decision. It was "an act of judicial cowardice," he fumed. But then he added, "There is, I am confident, more to it than this."

[Portcall24]

"...cited as a cause the PR pressure that President Barack Obama had been exerting on the Court in the fevered weeks leading up to the decision."

Have NSA (or Snowden) release all of the transcripts of the phone calls between the administration and Supreme Court/staff and I might be more incline to accept the argument.

[Jane Long]

From the article....

Imagine, though, if the chief justice had opined as everyone expected him to and joined with Scalia, Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy (ironically the swing vote whom ObamaCare opponents were most worried about) to guillotine the law then and there. The reduction of Mr. Obama's "crowning achievement" to just a gigantic waste of time when a dismal economy was begging for attention might well have cost him his re-election five months later.

I DO imagine this...every single day.

Howls of outrage would have erupted from every Democrat/leftist stronghold -- from the White House to Congress, from Hollywood to academia, and of course from the establishment media. The din would have been relentless. The smearing of small-government Republicans as selfish meanies would be easy as pie and more effective than ever.

So what? Who cares about the "howls of outrage" from the Dims...We the People are stronger than them. We proved that with the Chic Fil A Day, and more recently, with the Phil Robertson wave of support.

Nancy Pelosi would be speaker of the House again after next November's mid-term elections. Harry Reid would certainly remain as Senate majority leader. President Obama would be striding mightily across the national stage. His promised fundamental transformation of the United States of America would continue. Hillary Clinton would be a shoe-in for the White House in 2016. And "single-payer" -- full-bore socialist medicine -- would be a slam-dunk. HillaryCare redux.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with the author on all of this paragraph - I think he's wrong, wrong, wrong on the Pelousy, Dingy, 0bammie and Billary "shoe in" projections.

Perhaps worst of all, from Roberts's point of view, the Court's great prestige would suffer. Left-leaning historians, which means most historians, would be lumping the Court's killing of ObamaCare with Bush v. Gore and Citizens United to paint the Court as a right-wing political operation.

So, as Conservatives, we live in fear of what left-leaning historians would write/say about an appropriate SCOTUS ruling? Really?

My, how different is the real reality. Democrats are looking ahead in abject terror at the November midterms. And when those results come in, when Obama's lame-duckness grows acute, it's possible to imagine conservatives and Republicans being ready to let the far-seeing John Roberts out of the dog house.

Again, I'm not so sure the author will be right about this ultimate "outcome"...I pray he is right on this one.

[Revolting cat!]

Yeah, just like the Dred Scott decision and Prohibition.

We know. And what else, Captain Obvious, what else? We've just read of 800 laws being put in effect in California as of two short days ago. Even if you don't live in California, be careful when you step out the door in your state, the number there is huge as well, I bet, and you might break some law outside that oak front door of yours and not even know it.

[Dr. Ursus]

And bake a heck of a pie!

[El Cid]

The USA is destroyed, but boy it sure makes the Dems look bad - oh, I feel better now.

LOL!
Yes, who needs the Constitution? It is better to score some political points and shred the Constitution as we continue our slide into lawlessness. Yay...

[Fee]

DITTO. Court’s job is not to scheme indirectly to declare a law null. If CJ Roberts actually decided strategically to kill a law by declaring it legal and let it die of natural causes should be impeached. Our country has no time for such nonsense and cost. If true how many Americans must suffer before the law dies of financial implosion. IMHO CJ Roberts was blackmailed into changing his mind due to the two kids he adopted under questionable legal circumstances. If Obama does not blackmail him the Health Insurance industry will.

[Pollster1]

I read the ACA (all 2,000 pages of it). I read the full Supreme Court testimony on the ACA. I read the full opinion and dissent. There is no logical or legal justification for the Roberts decision. That law is fundamentally unconstitutional on the grounds presented before the Court. Roberts was wrong, and he’s smart enough that his error could not have been an accident; he chose to rule in violation of the Constitution.

It may be that Roberts will rule the ACA unconstitutional on other grounds in a future case, but that will not change the facts. Either for personal reasons (including perhaps blackmail), or for political reasons, Roberts failed to uphold his professional responsibility in that ruling.

[Revolting cat!]

Yeah, shore thang, Johnny boy! Best wishes to your Irish kids from president Obama.

[Huskrrrr]

I think the only good thing coming from the Roberts decision was the little reported paragraph stating that raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare was unconstitutional.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Yeah, just like the Dred Scott decision and Prohibition.

Yeah, just like Medicare, Medicaid, and SS. Too many Republicans are on board with Obaamcare (they think they can run it better). I don't trust them to repeal it.

[so_real]

I don't believe it has ever been the job of the judiciary to "spring traps" or "be diabolical". Is Roberts to be a Supreme Court Justice? or a politician? As an honorable conservative myself I hold him to a higher standard that does not permit such shenanigans with the law. He did wrong. He ought savor the opportunity to correct it.

[Kaslin]

I think so too

[Billthedrill]

While I acknowledge the merits of the child-touching-the-hot-stove approach to this particular legislation, I've always felt that the upshot is a too-clever-by-half arrangement that left the legislation in place where it should have been discarded as unconstitutional, which it is. Certainly there would have been howling and a great deal of political theater on the part of the Democrats. So what? Where in Article III is the Supreme Court tasked with preventing partisan political theater?

0bamacare is not going away, quietly or otherwise. Its proponents will lie, cheat, steal, misrepresent, use exemptions as political currency, in short, defend everything about it they have been doing already as a permanent grant of power. It should have been stopped cold on principle in the Supreme Court, not left as a template for clever legislative dodges as it will be.

[Ezekiel]

No kidding. It’s like saying that Joseph’s brothers had a genious far-reaching plan to save the nation of Israel. Pretzel logic on crack.

If the nation is saved, it will be through great tribulation. Man plots evil but it is God himself who can turn it around for good. God, Roberts ain’t.

[woofie]

I want to believe

[afraidfortherepublic]

raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare was unconstitutional.

But they are doing it anyway...

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Roberts may have also doomed Hillary Clinton's chance to live in the White House again.

Presidential candidates and presidencies come and go, but Roberts' ruling will be affecting the relationship between Americans and our government when our great-grandchildren are studying these times in their history texts (or whatever the equivalent will be). Violating the US Constitution by expanding the government's power over the lives of citizens is a catastrophe which dwarfs any temporary advantage in a single election - especially when that advantage is solely in the imaginations of a few conservative journalists.

[xzins]

This suggests amazing foresight, but it wouldn't be the only instance.

I don't buy that Roberts was setting a trap. I believe he was just making a whole series of truly unfathomable decisions.

[maica]

The act as passed is unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts should know that his job is like that of an umpire, calling balls and strikes. Leave the politics for the other branches.

I totally agree.

Also, it is not clever to uproot the medical coverage of millions of Americans, and the payment system to all of our medical care providers, in a game of Gotcha.

What our country is going to experience this coming year is beyond the imagination of too many Americans, including political commentators.

[Revolting cat!]

Again, I say that there was no need for an overt blackmail, horse’s head in Roberts’ bed or dead fishes. The wide knowledge of the illegal adoption was plenty sufficient, people! That’s how it is elegantly done among the upper classes, you peasants.