Jennifer Rubin can't really be as transcendently simple-minded as she seems to be, but every day she makes another gallant stab at proving that proposition wrong. Today, for example, she argues that "Obamacare" -- brace for intensely ominous dependent clause: the door that opens the barn to any and every exercise of federal power -- would, for the Obama reelection team, be better off laid to rest by the Supreme Court. An administration victory there, writes Rubin, would only electrify Republicans as well as the hostile independent vote, they of unsurpassed Constitutional expertise.
[B]ecause Obamacare is such a political loser, the Republicans are now in an enviable position: If they lose at the court, they win with the public, and if they win at the court, the left is demoralized. So conservatives can just sit back and enjoy the arguments. It’s the ultimate "heads I win, tails you lose" sort of case.
Why liberals would be "demoralized" by Obamacare's legal collapse is a matter left unilluminated by Rubin, and probably for good reason. HHS v. Florida would likely emerge for progressives in many of the same ways as Roe v. Wade emerged as a politically motivating power on the right; it would also open the political door for a speedier transition to Medicare for all, a movement which would of course absolutely delight the liberal collectivity.
And if Obama wins the case? Well, a win is a win. And other than the greatest obviousness -- that chief executives prefer winning to losing -- a win would, as well, drive a stake at least partially through the heart of the right's otherwise interminable chant about unConstitutional Obamacare.
But, opposite these arguments are also the potential realities of an erasure of Obama's signature achievement as president, in addition perhaps to not a few liberals declaring their permanent state of despair against the unending ascendence of right-wing fanaticism.
In other words, one simply cannot know how this will play out, either way. But to Jennifer Rubin? Not a problem. She has as her guide her stack of mimeographed talking points from the Romney campaign; and what's more, for Jennifer things always seem to play out in a knowing flash of immeasurable, pseudoconservative cleverness -- which comes across, yep, as pathetically simple-minded.
I can imagine that Rubin and other conservatives would be surprised to discover that I wouldn't see the overturning of the individual mandate as the end of ObamaCare, especially if the major parts of the legislation survive. HuffPo had a post on yesterday about a study whose results show that the individual mandate will affect only around 2% of our population. I wonder if she's read that? Probably not.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/26/health-care-mandate-urban-institute_n_1381211.html?ref=tw
Posted by: majii | March 27, 2012 at 07:50 PM