Summary: These days, the left is just about begging conservatives to surrender on repealing ObamaCare. Immediately after the Supreme Court’s controversial 5-4 ruling upholding its constitutionality, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel insisted that, “…Republicans need to drop their partisan obstruction and move on.” President Obama agreed, stating firmly, “…the law I passed is here to stay. …We are moving forward.” A couple of recent polls show that a sizable fraction of the electorate sympathizes with the idea, including some independents. This has been a long fight, so that’s understandable. Let’s retrace where we’ve been. The bitter public debate over the bill was ugly and confusing, as major proposals such as the “public option” were included and thrown out seemingly at random. Significant promises were made and broken, and President Obama ultimately flip-flopped on the individual mandate, lending it his support. Throughout the fight, conservatives screamed that the individual mandate constituted a gigantic tax, one that would impact every American who didn’t want to be forced to purchase health insurance. Democrats laughed off this argument, claiming that nobody could reasonably refer to the mandate as a tax (the joke’s on all of us, huh?). Prominent politicians predicted the bill wouldn’t pass, others insisted that it must include certain provisions or else they wouldn’t vote for it, and still more promised behind the scenes to vote for it in exchange for big earmarks to pet projects in their state or district. After fighting a lengthy war over health care reform, Democrats rammed ObamaCare through and the president hurriedly signed it into law. Even today, few Americans can follow the bizarre and often underhanded legislative process by which the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was ultimately passed. However, the fight wasn’t over. The health care debate energized the burgeoning Tea Party, and ObamaCare became the signature issue of the 2010 elections. As you may remember, those elections didn’t turn out very well for the law’s supporters. A wave of incoming Tea Party freshmen pledged to repeal ObamaCare in full, but a slim Democratic majority in the Senate has managed to delay the repeal coalition. While the Tea Party fought for full repeal through the electoral process, twenty-six state governments brought a lawsuit to the Supreme Court arguing that the individual mandate at the heart of ObamaCare is unconstitutional. Many legal scholars scoffed at the idea, and insisted that the lawsuit didn’t have a chance. After the oral arguments didn’t go so well, the left became hysterical. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. was lambasted by the left for his weak performance in the oral arguments. Liberals argued that the Supreme Court had become hopelessly partisan, political, and conservative. Ezra Klein even started asking if Democrats would have to pack the court FDR-style in order to get favorable rulings going forward. As we all know, the hysteria was for nothing. A majority of the Court ultimately decided to uphold the individual mandate’s constitutionality under Congress’s power to tax (an argument that the Obama administration repeatedly refuted and refused to make before the Court). Of course, now the left is singing a very different tune. You would be hard-pressed to find a prominent liberal bashing the Supreme Court these days. For them, the argument’s over. Done. Kaput. Move on. …Please? Can you imagine the vitriol thrown at the Court if the conservative majority had struck down the law? It would be incredible. How many, do you think, would argue that the Court had set an unbreakable precedent? That the argument was now over, and that conservatives had won for good? The Supreme Court doesn’t have the final word on the Constitution. The American people have the final word on the Constitution, because the people are sovereign. The left wants to use the dignity and respectabili
