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.

Obama's Failed Promise Under ObamaCare

Recently, the Mitt Romney campaign put out this infographic about President Obama's failed promise regarding ObamaCare:

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.

What George H. W. Bush & Barack Obama Have In Common?

Everyone remembers George H. W. Bush's famous promise not to raise taxes, right?:

Bill Clinton defeated George H. W. Bush by reminding voters of that broken promise: 

Remember Barack Obama's promise that he would not raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000? 

Obama may not have made a pledge as memorable as George H. W. Bush's but he broke his promise that he wouldn't raise taxes on Americans making less that $250,000. I expect Mitt Romney make a similar commercial in the same way Clinton did with Bush.

Team Romney, you know what to do. Do it.

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. 

Is There A Rift Between Ron Paul & His Supporters?

With the GOP convention in Tampa, Florida coming up soon, there has been a lot of discussion about what Ron Paul supporters will do at the convention. Its very possible that things will go off without a hitch or we could see some political skirmishes take place at the convention. 

As a result, I am worried about the convention and I do not trust the Ron Paul supporters who say that there will be no disruption at the GOP convention. I don't trust Ron Paul when he has told CNN’s Newsroom that he doesn't support or like the idea of disrupting the GOP convention. 

However, what does want is to have the ability to he  insert his political agenda and beliefs into the GOP platform. Ron Paul was never in the 2012 Presidential race to win. He has admitted on Fox News that he doesn't want the power of being the President but simply wants to influence the Republican Party's platform. He was only in it for the sole purpose of amassing enough delegates so that he can use his delegates as a way of getting the Republican party to adopt his libertarian views on foreign policy, economics and other issues.

That is why people like Rick Santorum sent a loud and clear message to Ron Paul and his supporters that they should not mess with the GOP platform. There are rumors that Mitt Romney might add Ron Paul's "Audit the Fed" campaign to the GOP platform. I'm open to adding that to the GOP platform but any other request from Ron Paul supporters to add more items on the platform is asking too much. 

There's also speculation that Paul's supporters might try to nominate him to be the Mitt Romney's Vice President and override whoever Romney picks to be his VP. While it is a possibility, it would do major damage to the GOP party as well as Mitt Romney and would hinder their efforts to make Obama a one term president. On the flip side of the coin, pulling a stunt like this would result in a major backlash against Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul and make a major dent in their political future. So as much as Ron Paul people may dream about this possibility, it is not a realistic given the consequences of what would happen if the Ron Paul supporters were successful in nominating Dr. Paul to be the V.P.

Ron Paul knows this. While Ron Paul supporters are itching for a fight at the convention and are making things difficult for the GOP party as evidenced by the lawsuit against the Republican Party by some supporters, he's being more cooperative with the GOP party than his supporters are: 

While the congressman from Texas didn't win any nominating contests this year, he amassed some 200 delegates to send to the convention, his campaign says. His backers have done that by winning extra delegates at state conventions that occur after primary voting, an often-overlooked process.

That strategy caused some in the GOP establishment to fear that Mr. Paul would try to hijack the convention through parliamentary stalling tactics and anti-Romney protests. Yet when his supporters announced a three-day Paul festival, including a 77th-birthday party for the candidate, at the state fairgrounds in Tampa the weekend before the convention, his campaign announced that he wouldn't attend. His focus instead is on the nascent official event organized with the GOP convention—which, meanwhile, hasn't decided yet whether to approve the festival that Paul backers are organizing on their own.

Mr. Paul's decision to play nice with Mr. Romney has already gotten him at least a few kind words. "Gov. Romney has a lot of respect for Dr. Paul and the energy his supporters bring to the process," Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. That's a notable contrast from 2008, when Mr. Paul opted to hold his own convention in Minneapolis as counterprogramming to the official convention in neighboring St. Paul. This year, both the GOP establishment and Mr.Mr. Paul seem to have found a way to satisfy their interests and present a more united front.

Given that I am not a fan of Ron Paul, I can't help but be skeptical about the different path Ron Paul is taking with his supporters. I honestly don't know what to make of it. Part of me hopes that this is a real and genuine split and tension between Ron Paul and his supporters about what to do and how to behave at the convention. The skeptic in me thinks otherwise. 

The only thing to do is wait and see how the convention unfolds.