ObamaCare Is The Reason Why Clinton Lost in 2016

One of the major reasons why Clinton lost the 2016 election was because of ObamaCare. 

There were two October surprises that rocked the Clinton Campaign. 

The first October surprise was the letter from the Director of the FBI stating that they found additional emails that required further review. 

The second October surprise came on October 24th, 2016 when the federal government informed Americans all over the country that they would be whacked with double-digit Obamacare premium increases. Americans woke up to news headlines like “Obamacare Premiums to Soar 22%.”

Although the FBI announcement rocked the Clinton Campaign badly, it didn't have a direct affect on people's lives. Director Comey's letter confirmed what people already knew about Hillary Clinton as a dishonest, corrupt, unethical politician. The government's announcement on increases in ObamaCare premiums did affect the daily lives of the voters because it hit them right in the wallet. 

Trump won states that traditionally lean Democratic in presidential elections because of the Obamacare premium increase. Take a look at the premium increases in these states. 

Minnesota: 59%

Wisconsin: 16%

Pennsylvania: 33%

Michigan: 16.7%

Naturally, the voters were outraged by the  skyrocketing costs of ObamaCare.

To make matters worse for Hillary Clinton, she took credit for ObamaCare by claiming she was the inspiration for ObamaCare as seen in this tweet put out by the Clinton Campaign. 

Surprisingly, Hillary Clinton was actually telling the truth to the American voter. The inspiration for ObamaCare came from Hillary Rodham Clinton and not Mitt Romney. She was the inspiration for ObamaCare.

When Obama created his health care plan back in 2008, Democratic Barack Obama took it directly from Hillary Clinton. The only difference between Hillary Clinton's plan and Barack Obama's Health Care plan was that her plan included a mandate and his didn't. Later, Obama would end up incorporating Clinton's mandate into ObamaCare. This means that 100% of ObamaCare came from Hillary Clinton.

Back in 2013, I predicted that ObamaCare would be a huge liability for Hilary Clinton's 2016 campaign. I was right because she could never distance herself from ObamaCare if she wanted to because Obama's health care plan was her plan in its entirety. In the end, her own health care plan cost her the Presidency.

Did Mitt Romney just admit that RomneyCare was the inspiration for ObamaCare?

The media is buzzing over Mitt Romney's recent statement about RomneyCare and ObamaCare. This is what he said: 

Romney also credited Mr. Stemberg with persuading him to push for health care reform in Massachusetts when he was governor.

Romney recalled that shortly after he was elected, Mr. Stemberg asked him why he ran for governor. Romney said he wanted to help people, and Mr. Stemberg replied that if he really wanted to help, he should give everyone access to health care, which Romney said he hadn’t really considered before.

“Without Tom pushing it, I don’t think we would have had Romneycare,” Romney said. “Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So without Tom, a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.”

What Mitt Romney said was that Tom Stemberg was the guy that got the ball rolling on the issue of improving access to health insurance. Mitt Romney didn't say that his plan was the source for Obama's plan. He simply mean Tom was the guy who got the snowball rolling down the hill and it grew from a state issue to a national issue.

Mitt Romney should have thought carefully when he spoke because it didn't come out the way he intended for it to come out.  As a result, everyone is now claiming that Mitt Romney is now admitting that RomneyCare was the inspiration for ObamaCare. 

 

The truth is Mitt Romney's health care plan was not the inspiration for ObamaCare. The idea was cribbed from Hillary Clinton. 

For one thing, Obama adopted Hillary's plan to the extent that ObamaCare should probably be called HillaryCare. There were similarities, because again, Obama and Hillary had no ideas of their own, they were vomiting up the dregs of liberal think tanks handfed to them by staffers.

Liberals actually blasted the Obama plan because it was looser, it didn't come with mandates or compel people to buy health insurance.

Here, let Paul Krugman tell it like it was: "The Obama campaign has demonized the idea of mandates — most recently in a scare-tactics mailer sent to voters that bears a striking resemblance to the “Harry and Louise” ads run by the insurance lobby in 1993, ads that helped undermine our last chance at getting universal health care."

And then Obama turned around and adopted mandates. HillaryCare became ObamaCare.

At a primary debate, Hillary complained that "Senator Obama has consistently said that I would force people to have health care whether they could afford it or not."

And Obama countered, "I have consistently said that Senator Clinton's got a good health care plan. I think I have a good health care plan. I think mine is better. But I have said that 95 percent of our health care plan is similar." (Source.)

The truth is this:

1) RomneyCare and ObamaCare are NOT the same.

2) Obama did NOT use RomneyCare as a template for his health care plan.

Johnathan Guber Also Lying About RomneyCare

Last week, a video of Jonathan Gruber was uncovered showing him talking about "ripping off" the Federal government to the tune of $400 million a year to finance RomneyCare. Watch the clip below:

Whenever someone comes out with a video clip that purports to show something scandalous, its better to see the entire clip. Watch Gruber's entire lecture below: 

Many conservatives see the short clip and think this is evidence that RomneyCare is just as slimy as ObamaCare. However, John Gibson of Fox News says that the short clip doesn't reveal the full story:

"...Gruber has also solved one mystery and and at the same moment created another. The first mystery: why exactly Obamacare is NOT a copy of Romneycare. Second mystery: why couldn’t Romney explain this simple difference when Obama claimed in the debate that his plan was just a national version of Romney’s.

Here’s what Gruber revealed: Romneycare was based on the fact the state of Massachusetts, courtesy the late Senator Teddy Kennedy, had a huge slush fund of federal money for the healthcare of the uninsured in that state, which Romney saw as an opportunity to use more efficiently funding universal coverage in Massachusetts. No other state had that advantage, no other state had a federal pot of money which in Massachusetts was $400,000,000, almost half a billion dollars.

Obamacare didn’t have that slush fund, either. Multiplied by the scale of 49 other states, Obamacare had to come up with trillions of dollars and that’s where the endless taxes on your health care comes in. That’s why your premiums and deductibles are so high. That’s why you are paying an onerous tax on a health plan the Obamacare designers, including especially Jonathan Gruber, consider too good, the so called Cadillac plans. That’s why Obamacare taxes your insurance company, which then passes on the cost to you.

All this is revealed in a half hour long interview Gruber did with PBS producer Micheal Kirk in June, 2012.

Gruber glosses over this fact of the Massachusetts slush fund…mostly."

The truth is that Governor Mitt Romney did not rip the Federal Government off. The $400 million was money that was already provided to the state long before Mitt Romney entered into office. Not once did the Federal Government ever object to what Mitt Romney did because there was no problem here. The federal government was aware of it and apparently gave its blessing to do this. In fact, the Washington Post demolishes Gruber's claim that the Federal government was ripped off and verifies that the government gave its blessing to the money to fund RomneyCare:

"He's [Gruber] talking about the deal from the federal government that helped Massachusetts set up its 2006 coverage expansion, which later became the basis for the Affordable Care Act. It's hardly a secret. And Bush re-authorized the deal in 2008.

The short story is basically this: Massachusetts, since the late 1990s, had been receiving special Medicaid funds through a waiver to fund care for populations the program traditionally didn't cover. In 2005, President George W. Bush wanted to end that funding, worth about $350 million. But Kennedy, working with Romney, put together a deal to keep the funds and then some by expanding Medicaid and providing subsidies to help low-income people purchase private insurance. The Bush administration signed off on that deal, giving us Romneycare, which then gave us Obamacare.That state Medicaid waiver has been renegotiated three times since then, including earlier this month."

 In other words, the late Senator Ted Kennedy was able to convince the Federal government to  provide this money for the purposes of assisting the uninsured in Massachusetts long before Mitt Romney became Governor. What Mitt did was that he lawfully diverted that money into funding RomneyCare to assist those who did not have insurance. The money was already there. Mitt Romney just found a more cost effective and efficient way to use that money for the same purpose. If the $400 million was being provided to the state to help uninsured people, why not use that money in a much more efficient way to help those without insurance?

Mitt Romney explained the entire process of how he developed his health care plan for the state of Massachusetts in his book, "No Apology: Believe in America." This is where John Gibson (and the rest of the media) gets it wrong. Mitt Romney did explain this difference. But people didn't want to listen or they weren't paying attention. Especially many conservatives. Many of them bought the lie that RomneyCare is the same as ObamaCare. This lie was enough to turn them off to Romney. They haven't done the research or the fact checking to see that RomneyCare is not even remotely the same as ObamaCare. And these conservatives don't want to take the time to learn the facts.

In fact, the funding scheme for RomneyCare is one of the central reasons why Mitt Romney said his health care plan for Massachusetts could not work at the national level. Johnathan Gruber makes this point for Mitt Romney without realizing it:

"The problem is there is no way to say that," Gruber said. "Because they're the same f[******] bill. He just can't have his cake and eat it too. Basically, you know, it's the same bill. He can try to draw distinctions and stuff, but he's just lying. The only big difference is he didn't have to pay for his. Because the federal government paid for it. Where at the federal level, we have to pay for it, so we have to raise taxes."

There you have it folks. The reason why RomneyCare cannot be done at the federal level is because of the unique funding scheme for Mitt's health care plan. In fact, Massachusetts was the only state in the nation to receive the special Medicaid funds for the purposes of helping uninsured citizens. Which is why RomneyCare could not be replicated in other states or at the federal level. It was a unique case. Had Massachusetts not been receiving this money since the 1990s, Mitt Romney would not have created RomneyCare. The funding from the federal government makes RomneyCare possible and unique.

The fact that RomneyCare was paid for by funds that were already being provided by the federal government is not a trivial difference. It is a major one. In fact, it is a crucial difference. Johnathan Gruber knows that. And he should have known that's why RomneyCare cannot be done at the federal level unless additional taxes are involved. Instead, the Obama Administration and Johnathan Gruber had to continuously lie and deny that ObamaCare was a tax. Implementing taxes are necessary to make ObamaCare a reality.  Had Obama been honest about this to the American people, ObamaCare would have died immediately.

That is why Obama and Gruber continually lie that RomneyCare and ObamaCare are the same. They are not the same on so many levels and for so many reasons. But the major and significant difference between ObamaCare and RomneyCare is the funding scheme.

Jonathan Gruber arrogantly lied by omitting the fact the $400 million was money that the Federal Government had already given to Massachusetts. RomneyCare didn't rip off the federal government.

ObamaCare program did rip off the American people. People are now paying more in health care costs and in taxes. And Obama and Gruber lied to you about the true funding and costs of the program.

ObamaCare: A Continuing Study on The Art of Political Deception

Back in October of 2013, I wrote an article about detailing how ObamaCare is an excellent study in how politicians manipulate, deceive and mislead the American people. In fact, the conception, passage and fragile survival of ObamaCare is probably the best example of political deception in modern American history. Someday, Obama will be known as the "great manipulator" in the same way that Regan will be remembered as the great communicator.

More details continue to emerge about Obama's campaign of deception in making ObamaCare the law of the land. We continue our study in the art of political deception with a video has been circulating around the Internet of Obama's 2008 Presidential run in which he aired a commercial that attacked John McCain's health care plan. 

The reason why this old 2008 campaign ad has suddenly become relevant today is because of how well Obama deceived the public on his health care plan.  Obama ended up adopting policies that were proposed by Hillary Clinton and John McCain even though he was initially against them during his 2008 campaign: 

And Obama, who has argued against adopting an individual mandate, as proposed by Hillary Clinton, ended up embracing exactly that option—and even accepted a variation of an idea from McCain that he criticizes in this ad.

What part of McCain's 2008 healthcare plan did Obama incorporate into ObamaCare? The high risk pools. The high risk pools was one of the criticisms Obama had against McCain's health care plan that was mentioned in Obama's 2008 campaign ad above. Its funny that every argument Obama had about McCainCare was, in hindsight, criticism of ObamaCare. 

This isn't the first time Obama attacked an idea before adopting it into his own plan. Obama went after Mitt Romney on RomneyCare's individual mandate before he ultimately incorporated Hillary Clinton's 2008 health care plan which included the individual mandate into ObamaCare.  Barack Obama's claims that Mitt Romney's healthcare plan was the basis for ObamaCare is a lie based on his own admission. There are many conservatives (as well as liberals) that argue that Obama got the idea for the individual mandate from Mitt Romney. That claim is not supported by the facts.

The truth is that 99% of ObamaCare is based on Hillary Clinton's health care plan with a few ideas from McCain's 2008 health care plan mixed in.

Obama sold himself to the public as young politician who would never lie his way into office and tell people what they wanted to hear. However, now that we have seen Obama in action as a politician as the President of the United States, he's everything he claimed he wasn't. He's a smooth talking, lying, do-whatever-it-takes-to-win, politician. Obama hasn't transcended politics. He's deep into politics.

The fact that Obama was against certain ideas contained HillaryCare, McCain Care and RomneyCare isn't case of a politician flip flopping. This is a case of outright deception in which he publicly opposed these ideas but secretly supported them. Obama had to scare voters away from supporting Hillary, McCain and Mitt Romney so that he can win the 2008 and 2012 election only later work to convince the American people to accept these proposals as part of ObamaCare that he advocated against as a candidate.

2012 Presidential Debate: The Facts About ObamaCare & RomneyCare

Many of you have been doing your due diligence of conducting your own research into who you should vote for in November. Tonight's 2012 Presidential debate will focus on the economy. Quite naturally, there will be a debate between Obama and Romney on health care. I have collected a series of articles I have written that you can read in preparation's for tonight's debate. 

The Facts About ObamaCare

1. Obama's Failed Promise Under ObamaCare
2. 5 Reasons Why ObamaCare Is Bad Law 
3. ObamaCare Unconstitutional, RomneyCare Constitutional
4. ObamaCare Unconstitutional, RomneyCare Constitutional 
5. See The Big Differences RomneyCare And ObamaCare
6. Another Democrat Admits ObamaCare Is A Trojan Horse For Single Payer Universal Health Care 
7. Obama Was Against RomneyCare Before He Was In Support For It 
8. Obama Did Not Use RomneyCare As A Template
9. ObamaCare Pays Off Big Business and Big Unions, RomneyCare Doesn't. 

  The Facts About RomneyCare

1. A Simple Way To Destroy Obama's New Attack Ad On RomneyCare
2. Ann Coulter On RomneyCare
3. Part VII: RomneyCareRomneyCare Not Socialized Medicine
4. Mitt Romney Would Repeal ObamaCare On The First Day Of His Presidency
5. The Truth Behind The Costs Of RomneyCare
6. In Defense Of RomneyCare (Updated: 4/4/11)
7. Please Call It MassDemCare, Not RomneyCare

Get Yourself Prepared For Tonight's 2012 Presidential Debate

Many of you have been doing your due diligence of conducting your own research into who you should vote for in November. Tonight's 2012 Presidential debate will focus on the economy. A few months ago, I wrote a series of blog articles analyzing various aspects of Mitt Romney's record which will help you educate yourself in preparation for tonight's debate. You can now read the entire series below: 

1. Getting To Know Mitt Romney's Record 
2. Mitt Romney's Faith & Economic Leadership
3. A Look At Mitt Romney's Business Career
4. Mitt Romney's Rescue of the Salt Lake Olympics 
5. How Mitt Romney Turned A $3 Billion Deficit Into A $2 Billion Surplus 
6. Govenor Mitt Romney's Record On Taxes And Fees 
7. RomneyCare 
8. Govenor Mitt Romney's Impressive Record of Job Creation 
9. Mitt Romney's Leadership Style 
10. Concluding Thoughts About Mitt Romney's Record

In contrast, I have prepared a few articles which highlight's Obama's economic record. 

1. Obama's Economic Record: Hope Is Fading For Americans
2. Obama's Dismal Economic Record
3. Who Has A Better Economic Record: Obama Or Romney? 
4. President Obama Has Never Been Serious About Reducing The Deficit 
5. Obama Still Isn't Serious About the Economy
6. Obama Now Irrelevant On The Economy
7. David Axlerod Not Telling The Truth Mitt Romney's Economic Record
8. A Contrast In How Obama And Mitt Romney Have Handled A Down Grade In Credit Rating
9. Obama's Numerous Broken Promises To Focus on Jobs
10. Who Is Right: About What Is The Biggest Driver Of Our Deficit: Obama or The CBO?

Quite naturally, there will be a debate between Obama and Romney on health care. I have collected a series of articles you can read in preparation's for tonight's debate. 

The Facts About ObamaCare

1. Obama's Failed Promise Under ObamaCare
2. 5 Reasons Why ObamaCare Is Bad Law 
3. ObamaCare Unconstitutional, RomneyCare Constitutional
4. ObamaCare Unconstitutional, RomneyCare Constitutional 
5. See The Big Differences RomneyCare And ObamaCare
6. Another Democrat Admits ObamaCare Is A Trojan Horse For Single Payer Universal Health Care 
7. Obama Was Against RomneyCare Before He Was In Support For It 
8. Obama Did Not Use RomneyCare As A Template
9. ObamaCare Pays Off Big Business and Big Unions, RomneyCare Doesn't. 

  The Facts About RomneyCare

1. A Simple Way To Destroy Obama's New Attack Ad On RomneyCare
2. Ann Coulter On RomneyCare
3. Part VII: RomneyCareRomneyCare Not Socialized Medicine
4. Mitt Romney Would Repeal ObamaCare On The First Day Of His Presidency
5. The Truth Behind The Costs Of RomneyCare
6. In Defense Of RomneyCare (Updated: 4/4/11)
7. Please Call It MassDemCare, Not RomneyCare

I know its a lot of reading but you can use this to help you arm yourself with the facts so that you can be prepared for tonight's debate. You can also bookmark this page and come back to it to do more reading in preparation to decide who to vote for on November 6th. 

When Mitt Says I'll Repeal ObamaCare, He Means It

Ever since Mitt Romney has been running for President, he's been repeatedly said he would repeal ObamaCare. Recently, Mitt Romney was on Piers Morgan Tonight talking about ObamaCare: 

Many high profile conservatives such as Representative Paul Ryan, Ann Coulter and Fred Barnes are confident that if Mitt Romney becomes the next President of the United States, he will honor his campaign promise to repeal ObamaCare. 2012 will be the year Obama gets out of office and his health care law will be repealed. But that will only happen IF do all that you can to help Mitt Romney win.

Why More Conservative Supreme Court Justices Are Needed

Normally, I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh but there wasn't anything else good on the radio and so I decided to tune in to Rush. And he helped me to see the light on ObamaCare: 

The brilliance of the United States Constitution is its timelessness.  It applies to the human condition until eternity, because it is a document devoted to maintaining, proclaiming, and maintaining the freedom and liberty of the individual.  It's the greatest document of liberty and freedom ever written by human beings, and it is a target.  And it has just been dealt a very severe blow.  And to sit here and argue over whether what remains because of the Supreme Court ruling is a tax or a penalty is to lose the argument in November.  What are we left with, after all of that?  Tax penalty, Roberts brilliantly left a secret plan for us in there. It will manifest in years down the road.  What are we left with?  We're left with Obamacare.  We have Obamacare.  It's intact every bit as much as it was.

 Like many people, I got caught up in looking at the silver lining and analyzing how clever Justice Roberts was in the wake and I failed to see that whatever silver lining that exists is completely overshadowed by the fact that ObamaCare exists. The debate between Obama and Romney about the penalties or tax in their health plans is stupid. This silly debate will no doubt show up in the Presidential debates in the fall.

Given how ObamaCare was upheld, I am nervous about how the Supreme Court Justices will rule on the upcoming legal challenges that are on the way to the Supreme Court:

The next wave of lawsuits likely wouldn’t put the whole law at stake, as the challenge to the individual mandate could have. But they’re going after pieces of the law that happen to be red meat for many conservative voters — like the law’s contraception mandate and a new Medicare panel that Republicans call a “rationing board.”

And one possible legal challenge, which would try to block the feds from offering subsidies in a federal health insurance exchange, is meant to exploit a loophole in the law. But it could also be a good “messaging hit” — allowing them to attack the subsidies they see as a budget-busting new entitlement.

The fact that the Supreme Court will ruling on individual parts of the ACA worries me since the Court could uphold these parts of the law or they can chip away at the law by holding the various parts of the law unconstitutional. What's even more disturbing is that we find that Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and parts of the minority opinion and that we will never know why he ended up upholding ObamaCare.

Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on the additional challenges to ObamaCare, we are still stuck with all the taxes in the law and the additional taxes that are forthcoming in the near future. We are also stuck with other provisions of the law that will do great damage to our nation's economy. 

We have to repeal this law. The only option that is left to us, thanks to the Supreme Court, is to elect Mitt Romney as our next President. But there's another reason why we need to elect Mitt Romney. What Chief Justice John Roberts did was make it very clear that we need more conservatives on the Supreme Court bench. We can never afford to have a Supreme Court Justice switch on the American people at the last minute. By electing Mitt Romney, we will have the opportunity to put more conservative judges on the Supreme Court. Thus, we need a conservative majority not only to keep the liberals in the minority but now we see we need them in the event one or two justices decide to go with the liberal minority, we still have a conservative majority.

Liberals Understand The Impact of The Supreme Court Ruling On ObamaCare Better Conservatives Do

Those conservatives who are angry with Chief Justice John Roberts for upholding ObamaCare fail to see that he was able swing the Supreme Court to the right and to make it easier for future Supreme Court justices to apply the proper and constitutional analysis to legal issues that will come before the court. 

However, Liberals clearly understand just how significant this ruling is for the conservative movement: 

In the term that ended last week, the Supreme Court reached a liberal outcome in cases involving President Obama’s health care law, Arizona’s draconian immigration statute and mandatory life sentences for juveniles. But the conservative majority also laid down a cache of weapons that future courts can use to attack many of the legislative achievements of the New Deal and the Great Society — including labor, environmental, civil rights and consumer protection laws — and to prevent new progressive legislation. Far from being a source of jubilation, the term may come back to haunt liberals. 

...

The Roberts court has intensified the effort to reduce federal power. That the individual mandate was upheld should not overshadow the court’s ruling on Medicaid expansion — the part of the ruling that is most likely to affect other legislation in the near future.

For the first time since the New Deal, the court struck down an exercise of Congress’s spending power. It held that Congress lacked the power to deny Medicaid funds to states that refuse to expand their coverage. Chief Justice Roberts — joined by the liberal justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan — held that while the government can deny additional Medicaid funds to states that refuse to expand their coverage, it cannot penalize them by rescinding current Medicaid payments.

Legal conservatives have come to the same conclusion once they overcame the initial shock of the decision and actually read the Supreme Court's decision. Virginia Attorney General  Ken Cuccinelli has echoed the liberal's fear concerning the implication of Chief Justice Robert's opinion. Famous conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer also acknowledges Robert's contribution to moving the conservative agenda at the Supreme Court. 

The only thing that liberals can be happy about is that ObamaCare has been upheld.  They don't care how it was upheld so long that it was found to be constitutional.  With all the liberals and progressives that I have talked to about this decision, they are not worried that it was upheld as a government tax. The taxes do not bother them because all they wanted to was to keep ObamaCare alive at any cost. The reason why they are not concerned about the fact that ObamaCare has morphed into ObamaCareTax is because they know that once an entitlement program is in place, it is virtually impossible to kill and as a result, the program achieves legislative immortality. Liberals want ObamaCare to be around foreover and they don't care about the source that keeps it alive. They also don't care about the consequences entitlements have on countries that implement them. 

In contrast, conservatives wanted this law to be killed immediately. However, Chief Justice John Roberts made the correct, legal and constitutional decision of leaving the responsibility of killing the law in the hands of the American people and its elected representatives.Furthermore, he made it easier for people to repeal Obamacare because by classifying this program as a tax, it becomes budgetary issue that requires 51 votes to get rid of it, not 60. He also provided the American people with the motivation to get rid of this law because there are two things that Americans hate the the most and that is taxes and ObamaCare. By merging the two things Americans hate into one, its a lethal and explosive combination for Obama and the Democrats, especially as Americans go to the ballot box in November. Mike Flynn, writing for Breitbart, points out that the "ruling will probably go down in history as the most effective GOP voter turnout operation ever."

Finally, given that Democrats love enacting new taxes and raising taxes on the American people, Chief Justice John Roberts made it difficult for Congress to raise taxes in the future since all future government programs will be labeled as a tax. Conservatives are justified in their concerns that the courts will defer to Congress in calling government programs a tax and uphold it on those grounds. What these conservatives forget is that given that Americans loathe taxes, Roberts increased the  political risks for Congress in passing new government programs. Thus, Congress will be more reluctant to create new government programs for fear of facing their constituent's ire for creating new taxes. That's the theory, at least.

Liberals and progressives fully understand the impact of Chief Justice Robert's decisions while Conservatives are still trying to come to terms with the Supreme Court decision rather looking beyond the holding and looking at the long term implications of the holding. Chief Justice Roberts has moved the conservative agenda on the Supreme Court far down the field and the Left knows it. It will take a while for Conservatives to see that he made the right decision and once they do, they will realize how powerful Chief Justice Robert's decision is for conservatives.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli: Supreme Court Health Care Decision Limits The Power Of The Government

As I said yesterday, Chief Justice John Roberts did the right thing by upholding ObamaCare in such a way as to lay the ground work for the eventual demise of ObamaCare and at the same time drastically limited the Federal Government. 

Virginia Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli gives a brief interview with the Daily Caller and explains that over time, conservatives will see this landmark decision that reverses the growth of government which is something the Supreme Court hasn't done since the New Deal. Watch the clip below:

Many conservatives are angry and upset with Chief Justice John Roberts. There are unpleasant pictures of John Roberts floating around on facebook, blogs and conservative websites. I understand their reaction but they are only looking at the short term goal of repealing ObamaCare and were disapointed that didn't happen. 

However, legal conservatives such as myself, Ken Cuccinelli and others are quiet happy with this decision because the long term goal of limiting the power of the federal government was accomplished and that this reduction in the size, scope and power is a permanent and lasting change on our government. As a result, John Roberts made a wise decision by going after the long term goals of conservatism rather than focusing on the short term of goal of striking down ObamaCare. 

Why Chief Justice Justice John Roberts Made The Right Decision On ObamaCare

Given that I have been extremely busy lately with my law work, I haven't had time to keep up on my blog. However, I would like to share my thoughts on the Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare today. I'd like to my observations about Chief Justice John Roberts which will help me unpack my thoughts on ObamaCare.

Many people on both the Left and the Right are surprised that Chief Justice Roberts joined the majority in upholding ObamaCare. While the Left is overjoyed with him, the Right are not only surprised by his position but there seems to be a bit of a mystery as to when he decided to uphold ObamaCare. For me, I'm not interested in solving that mystery and quite frankly I don't care when or why he switched. 

What I do care about is the impact of his decision on our country. I haven't read the entire decision yet (I'll probably get around to it this weekend) but unlike other conservatives, I am happy with the fact that he joined the majority in upholding ObamaCare. Let me explain why. 

Prior to the ruling conservatives were worried that if the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was held constitutional, then it would give Congress unlimited regulatory power. But by holding that ObamaCare as unconstitutional under the Commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, he has halted the expansion of that power and has now set the stage to shrink the Commerce Clause back to its proper constitutional boundaries: 

Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce.”

Chief Justice Roberts may have made a smart and crafty move by giving Obama limited political victory while holding that ObamaCare is unconstitutional under he Commerce clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause or the Spending Clause.  

When I say that Chief Justice Roberts gave Obama a political victory, its a limited victory and its a win that may not last very long. In fact, I believe that Roberts intentionally and cleverly designed it to be a short term victory by holding it to be a constitutionally valid exercize of Congress' power to tax: 

Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.The court reinforces that individuals can simply refuse to pay the tax and not comply with the mandate.

How short could this victory be? It could be less than a month. 

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) has promised to hold a vote on July 11th to repeal ObamaCare after Congress gets back from its July 4th recess. House Speaker John Boehner is also behind the effort to repeal this law as quickly as possible.  But a full repeal is not likely to happen. The vote to repeal it will certainly pass in the House where the Republicans are a majority but not in the Senate where Democrats have a slim majority.

The victory could come as short as 130 days when America goes to the ballot box to decide to either keep the current President or get a new one. As Mitt Romney explains it, the only way to repeal ObamaCare is to get rid of Obama. Mitt Romney has repeatedly promised that he will repeal ObamaCare on his first day in office. 

However, voting for Mitt Romney to be our new President won't fully repeal ObamaCare. We need a Republican majority in both houses of Congress. We already have a Republican majority in the House and we need to keep that majority in 2012. We also need to make the Democrats a minority in Congress by getting as many Republicans in the Senate as possible.

But lets get back to small victory that Chief Justice John Roberts gave to Obama. By limiting the constitutionality of ObamaCare to Congress power to tax, he's has laid the groundwork for Congress to repeal it very easily. Congress can do whatever it wants with taxes. They can raise taxes, lower taxes or eliminate it all together.

Nancy Pelosi famously told the American people that we had to pass ObamaCare to find out what it is in it. Republicans charged that the federal individual mandate was a tax and Obama denied that accusation.  

Americans hate taxes. And they also hate ObamaCare just as much.  And that's a lethal combination, especially for an incumbent President running for reelection. 

Americans will not be happy to find out that the Democrats lied to them for denying it was a tax and the Supreme Court did what Nancy Pelosi asked the American people to do by looking what is in the law and Congress passed the law only to find out that it was...another tax increase on the American people. That means that 26 million people or roughly around 70-75 percent of the people who make less than $200,000 a year, will now be paying a new additional tax which is estimated to be a $1.7 trillion tax over the first decade.

If you think about it, declaring ObamaCare as constitutionally valid tax increase is such an intelligent yet simple and elegant way of repealing ObamaCare since he properly placed the responsibility of repealing it back to Congress (where it should belong) and the American people.  

Thus, Obama's victory is a limited and hollow one since Roberts is essentially saying that Obama is a tax loving Democrat which leaves nothing really good for the President to cheer about during the election season:

Republicans would have preferred the court overturn the health care bill, an act that would have underscored Obama's biggest liability -- the perception among voters, including those who like and trust him, that he has been ineffective.

But you can count on them to use Roberts' bill-saving justification to label Obama a tax-and-spend liberal.

"I'm sure they'll nail us on taxes and I'm sure it will work," said a senior White House official speaking on condition of anonymity. "But, given the alternative, that's a bitter pill I'm ready to swallow."

By upholding ObamaCare, Obama's victory is a short lived victory for the President since it leaves him in an politically uncomfortable position for the rest of the election year and may end up costing him his job:

Obama is boxed in. What is he to do? He can't criticize the Court for judicial activism, as it upheld the law (putting aside the way the Court limited the Medicaid provisions, which are not particularly salient to voters). The decision undercuts a potential theme of his campaign -- that a conservative Court is out of control. And yet Obama can't trumpet the decision either, since it states that Democrats overreached in trying to justify the law under the Commerce Clause. Worse yet, it calls the mandate something that Democrats didn't want it to be: a tax.

Conversely, the decision may be the optimal result for Mitt Romney. If the Court had struck down the mandate, it would have taken off the table an issue that Republican base voters care tremendously about. But in upholding the law, the Court didn't just leave that issue on the table; it gave Romney tremendous ammunition he can use to criticize Obama as a tax raiser.

There was much contrarian wisdom floating around prior to the decision about how a defeat might be helpful to Obama, as he could run against the Court. Jeffrey Toobin criticized this as "nonsense": "Winners win, and losers lose." We'll never know if Obama could have potentially won by losing the health care case. But the coming months will tell whether he might have lost by winning.

In the end, Chief Justice John Roberts did the right thing by joining the liberal 5-4 majority by working within the system to engineer the eventual demise of ObamaCare. 

A Simple Way To Destroy Obama's New Attack Ad On RomneyCare

Recently, the Obama Campaign team released a new ad titled, "The Anniversary of Romneycare" in which it attacks Mitt Romney's for supporting the individual mandate at the state level but wants to repeal the individual mandate at the national level. 

Here is the clip below:

The Romney Campaign is well known for rapidly responding to political attacks from campaign rivals can simply refute this ad by simply airing this clip on nation wide: 

The video clip isn't the first time Obama has objected to the individual mandate. Back in 2008, when Obama was running for President, he supported a health care reform proposal that didn't not include the individual mandate because he had concerns about how the individual mandate was a slippery slope that could lead the government to think that they can solve homelessness by mandating that everyone buy a house.

All the Romney media team has to do is throw Obama's own words back at him. This would be very effective since it would show Obama flip flopping on the individual mandate. Moreover, it would cause the voters across this country to wonder if Obama was so strongly opposed to the individual mandate in 2008, why would he include it in his own health care plan? The only conclusion that the viewers will draw from that question is that Obama must have disingenuously opposed it for political reasons rather than having any sincere objections to it.

Rick Santorum Is Not The Ideal Candidate To Go One On One With Obama On ObamaCare

With the United States Supreme Court hearing arguments on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, Rick Santorum used this historic moment to launch another attack on RomneyCare:

Santorum then drew some unwanted headlines this past weekend and Monday after he said that Romney is the "worst Republican in the country to put up against Barack Obama." He claimed he was only talking about the health care issue. He later cursed at a New York Times reporter who asked about the charge.

Undeterred, Santorum pounded the issue again on the Supreme Court steps Monday afternoon: "If we run this campaign, which we will, on Obamacare and we're successful, there's no doubt Obamacare will be repealed in one form or another, and that's not going to be the case with Governor Romney because he can't make it the argument, because if he makes it the argument, the Obama machine will turn it right back on him."

Rick Santorum's claim that Mitt Romney is a bad candidate to go one on one with Obama on the issue of ObamaCare is odd given that Santorum was one of the many conservatives who have supported RomneyCare in the past. Moreover, Rick Santorum supported an employer mandate in which his plan would mandate that employers be required to offer their workers a chance to purchase health insurance. If Rick Santorum decides to go after Obama on ObamaCare, the President will have no trouble returning fire during the general election.

Rick Santorum's claims that Mitt Romney can't make the case for overturning ObamaCare because Obama will turn it right back on him is also bizzare. Mitt Romney has repeatedly promised that he will repeal ObamaCare on the first day in office as President. Recently, on March 22,  Mitt released an article reaffirming his promise to repeal ObamaCare and outlining additional steps he would take to reform America's health care system. Mitt Romney has already made the argument that he will repeal ObamaCare and Obama can't attack Romney on that point without getting dragged into a debate on the Constitutionality of his health care plan which is something that Obama himself may not want to do since a large majority of Americans do not support ObamaCare.

In fact, if there was any candidate who is ideal for going against Obama on the issue of ObamaCare, its Mitt Romney:

"The central tenet of the “Anybody-But-Romney” conservative theology is this article of faith: Nominating the former Massachusetts governor will take away the Republican Party’s best 2012 issue — because “Romneycare” is so like “Obamacare.” ABR true believers lump the two plans together, with the epithet “Obamneycare.”

This conservative faith is wrong, however. To the extent that attacks on President Barack Obama’s health care reform are good politics, the candidate best able to make them is Mitt Romney.

Since he orchestrated and then signed the Massachusetts health care law, Romney is uniquely qualified to lead the GOP attacks against the federal health care reform bill.

Why? He would be the first GOP nominee in nearly 50 years with a proven track record on health care who has been praised by Democrats — including the president — as fair and compassionate. He can’t be demonized as an out-of-touch, uncompassionate, hard-right ideologue on this issue.

Americans have been telling pollsters since 1965 that they favor Democrats over Republicans when asked whom they trust on health care issues. That was when President Lyndon B. Johnson and congressional Democrats passed the historic Medicare program — over the objections of many high-profile Republican opponents, including future President Ronald Reagan.

This political landscape meant GOP presidential nominees have regularly been put on the defensive, sometimes even demonized, on health care issues. Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are typical in this regard."

"...Think of the advantage that this situation gives Romney: Even if the health care law is ruled constitutional, legitimate political questions remain because it is not fully operative for two more years. Only “Romneycare” is a public-private-sector plan in full operation, praised by his opponents — like Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a top Obama ally. By embracing a role for government in addressing health care, Romney has neutralized traditional winning Democratic arguments.

The Obama campaign has one overriding aim — paint any GOP nominee as out of touch with the problems facing average Americans. “Romneycare” presents a problem for this narrative. If the former head of Bain Capital is allegedly the “same ole” GOP rich guy worshipping at the altar of social Darwinism, how does the “compassionate party” explain away using “Romneycare” as a model?"

There is one fundamental difference between RomneyCare and ObamaCare that people on the left and on the right somehow fail to grasp. Its a difference that Mitt Romney has been making for many months now and its a distinction that the attorneys opposing ObamaCare in the Supreme Court explained today:

If the Supreme Court overturns the individual mandate based on the theory argued by Paul Clement, the attorney representing the 26 states that filed lawsuits against Obamacare, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign could get a big boost from the ruling.

Clement told the court, just as Romney has told Republican primary voters, that states have the power to enact individual mandates wheras the federal government has no such authority.

"I do think the States could pass this mandate," Clement said today in response to a question from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. "[T]he States can do it because they have a police power, and that is a fundamental difference between the States on the one hand and the limited, enumerated Federal Government on the other."

Romney has argued throughout the presidential primary that Massachusetts has the ability, under the 10th Amendment, to enact an individual mandate for health insurance.

Democrats prepping for the general election have attacked Romney for supporting the individual mandate in his state while opposing President Obama's mandate.

If the Supreme Court agrees that states can enact mandates, but rules that Obama's mandate is an unconstitutional infringement on individual liberty, then Romney will have a solid rebuttal.

ObamaCare will certainly be an issue during the 2012 general election since the Supreme Court won't publicly release their decision until June which is a few months before election day. Romney's defense of RomneyCare is a solidly constitutional argument and whereas Obama's defense of ObamaCare isn't. The contrast between state's rights and governmental overreach will be made very clear if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee.  As a result, Mitt Romney is the best and strongest defender of state's rights and economic liberty and is the ideal candidate to go head to head with Obama.

Fact Check: Newt Gingrich And Rick Santorum Endorsed RomneyCare

During CNN's Florida Republican GOP debate, both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum attacked Mitt Romney over his health care plan. However, both candidates supported RomneyCare before they were against it. 

Newt Gingrich & RomneyCare

USA Today fact checked Newt's claim during the CNN debate that that he never endorsed RomneyCare and found out that Gingrich's claim is FALSE:

Former House speaker Gingrich claimed he had never favored a federal mandate requiring individuals to obtain health insurance — only a state requirement.

Gingrich: I didn't advocate federal mandates. I talked about it at a state level …

Not true. Gingrich said "Congress" must require high-income persons to have insurance, not state legislatures. He did so explicitly in a 2007 opinion piece:

Gingrich, June 25, 2007: In order to make coverage more accessible, Congress must do more, including passing legislation to [among other things] require anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year to purchase health insurance or post a bond.

His support for a federal mandate is of long standing. In 1993, on NBC's Meet the Press, he said:

Gingrich, 1993: I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance. And I am prepared to vote for a voucher system which will give individuals, on a sliding scale, a government subsidy so we insure that everyone as individuals have health insurance.

Gingrich was proposing an individual mandate as an alternative to the Clinton administration's ill-fated health care plan, which was centered on an employer mandate, requiring businesses to provide insurance for their workers. And he held to a similar position as recently as last May, also on Meet the Press:

Gingrich, May 15, 2011: Well, I agree that all of us have a responsibility to pay — help pay for health care. And, and I think that there are ways to do it that make most libertarians relatively happy. I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond … or in some way you indicate you're going to be held accountable.

NBC's David Gregory: But that is the individual mandate, is it not?

Gingrich: It's a variation on it.

If Gingrich was thinking about a state-only mandate, he never said so at the time. And he clearly said "all of us" would be subject to his "variant" of the mandate just last May. We judge that Gingrich is falsifying his own history on this matter.

Rick Santorum, Individual Mandate & RomneyCare

During the CNN debate, Rick Santorum went after both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich for supporting the RomneyCare and individual mandate. The New Republican found that Rick Santorum is being dishonest in his attacks since he supported the individual mandate: 

PolitiFact verified several days ago that Santorum's claim that Gingrich has supported some version of the mandate for 20 years was "mostly true." But it didn't think to ask whether Santorum, too, has supported the individual mandate in the past. And as it happens, he has. He supported it in 1994, according to this April 7, 1994 article in the Allentown, Pa. Morning Call, and this May 2, 1994 article in the same newspaper. It's possible that the newspaper would have gotten this wrong once, but in the heat of a primary campaign it's highly unlikely Santorum's campaign would have allowed it to get this wrong twice. 

Moreover, Rick Santorum has flipped flopped on RomneyCare. He endorsed Mitt Romney during the 2008 Presidential elections yet Santorum had issues with it now:  

“I feel we need someone who is a strong, principled conservative who believes not in government mandates, not in government control of the health care system, but in a patient-centered approach to health care,” Santorum said.

Santorum added that both the state and federal laws "tend to drive employers out of the private sector plans because they’re expensive and more people end up on the government plan."

“Ultimately, it’s a failure," Santorum said.

Apparently, the phrase, "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" has no meaning to Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich. They can't hide from their past and are hoping voters won't notice the glass shattering every time they try to attack the individual mandate or RomneyCare. But the voters do notice it. 

These two men also don't realize why Mitt Romney is bullet proof when it comes to attacks on RomneyCare. They'e in no position to be throwing blows at Romney since they've both supported the individual mandate and RomneyCare. As as result, every time they attack Mitt, they get weaker and weaker while Mitt Romney gets stronger and stronger. 

Rick Perry Would Have Lost Mitt Romney's $10,000 Bet

Much is being made of Mitt Romney's $10,000 bet on last night's Iowa Republican debate. Many people are focusing on the amount Romney put up for the bet and blasting him for being wealthy enough to put up that kind of money while others are criticizing him for making a childish bet. 

The point of the bet was to prove that Rick Perry was being dishonest in his false claim that there are with differences between hardcover and paperback editions of Romney's book regarding Mitt's position about his own health health care plan. Had Rick Perry accepted that bet, he would have lost. 

The Washington Post fact checked Perry's claim and found that Rick Perry would have lost that bet:

This is when Romney offered to make a $10,000 bet and Perry declined to take it. Smart man, because he would have lost the money.

We explored this issue before when Perry made this claim in a television ad, giving Perry Three Pinocchios. And here is a PDF of the paperback edition showing the pages in question.

Perry is making a phony claim.

It is clear that the hardcover edition was written when Obama’s health-care plan was still a work in progress. For instance, Romney spends some time denouncing the idea of a public option as “government-supplied insurance.” The paperback was published after the health-care law was passed, so the paragraphs on the public option — which had been abandoned by Obama — are dropped.

Romney also must have sensed that GOP anger at Obama’s health-care law might make his own signature legislative achievement less attractive to Republican voters, so he added a few paragraphs emphasizing how the Democratic governor who followed him made changes in the law that he did not approve of. But otherwise the changes are minimal — the standard updating that takes place in paperback nonfiction books.

The non-partisan website PolitiFact.com says Rick Perry's claim is mostly false:

Perry's grievance is with differences between hardcover and paperback editions of Romney's book. We've combed through Chapter 7 of both.

Romney's changes to the book have been explored before, by Boston political journalist David S. Bernstein. He noted in February 2011 that Romney had added harsher language on the national health care law as passed: "Obamacare will not work and should be repealed," and, "Obamacare is an unconstitutional federal incursion into the rights of states."

Romney more clearly explained ways that he disagreed with implementation of the Massachusetts law.

He also changed this line, which came after a paragraph touting the success of the Massachusetts health plan:

Hardcover: "We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country, and it can be done without letting government take over health care."

To:

Paperback: "And it was done without government taking over health care."

The deleted 11 words, "We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country" are the crux of Perry's argument. His campaign sent e-mail the day after the debate with a link highlighting precisely that change.

It looks suspicious, right? Perhaps Romney did extol every piece of his Massachusetts plan, individual mandate and all, for every state in the union.

But here's the original quote with full context from Page 177 of the hardcover: 

"My own preference would be to let each state fashion its own program to meet the distinct needs of its citizens. States could follow the Massachusetts model of they choose, or they could develop plans of their own. These plans, tested in the state 'laboratories of democracy' could be evaluated, compared, improved upon, and adopted by others. But the creation of a national plan is the direction in which Washington is currently moving. If a national approach is ultimately adopted, we should permit individuals to purchase insurance from companies in other states in order to expand choice and competition.

"What we accomplished surprised us: 440,000 people who previously had no health insurance became insured, many paying their own way. We made it possible for each newly insured person to have better care, and ultimately healthier and longer lives. From now on, no one in Massachusetts has to worry about losing his or her health insurance if there is a job change or a loss in income; everyone is insured and pays only what he or she can afford. It's portable, affordable health insurance — something people have been talking about for decades. We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country, and it can be done without letting government take over health care."

Romney's not really saying the Massachusetts law "should be the model for the country," the way that Perry describes it. He's in fact presenting a defense of state-level choice. It's like a shout-out to other state leaders: Hey, you can have what Massachusetts has!

And it's consistent with what Romney fired back at Perry in the Sept. 22, 2011 debate: "This is a state plan for a state, it is not a national plan." And with how he characterized his own book in the most recent debate: "I say, in my view, each state should be able to fashion their own program for the specific needs of their distinct citizens."
Romney did support Massachusetts' individual mandate. But we don't see evidence in his hardcover book that he supported a federal one, much less that he removed such a reference from later editions.

Other news outlets have fact checked Perry's claim and have found that Rick Perry would have lost that bet. However, too many people are focusing on Romney's bet rather than on the fact that Rick Perry has repeatedly made a claim that can be factually to be proven false. The good news is that despite the fact that Rick Perry declined to take that bet, he lost in that exchange because he keeps pushing a claim against Romney that has been debunked before. Rick Perry doesn't care about the truth, he only wants to hurt Mitt Romney. 

This plan will backfire on Rick Perry because voters care more about the truth rather than scoring political points or scaring voters into not voting for that candidate.