Anyone still think the SCOTUS will uphold the PPACA? [View all]

[Alcibiades]

I posted a thread a couple of days ago, wherein folks argued that the very smart folks in the Obama administration said this was constitutional, and that it would therefore be upheld. Of course, these same very smart folks failed to ensure that the final version of the bill would include a severability clause, so that's really not a particularly strong argument.

Some other folks claimed that the court would uphold the PPACA, even going so far as to predict that Kennedy would support it, perhaps even along with Roberts and Scalia (!).

From the transcript, the solicitor general seems to have offered a pretty stammering defence of the PPACA. He seemed to want to come back to the phrase "It's a market," and was caught utterly flatfooted by what seem to be witless analogies offered up by the five who are poised to strike down the PPACA.

Politico includes a link to the transcript:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74525.html

Again, most of the legal analysis has referenced prior decisions and opinions by specific justices, as though they were in some way beholden to ideas. They are not. These are members of the GOP, in lockstep with their national party, who want nothing more than to declare the PPACA unconstitutional and hand the president a loss and hand Mitt Romney an issue--after all, Romneycare would be constitutional, but not the PPACA, which would kill an issue that has haunted him.

Legal arguments, stare decisis, and, the constitution itself simply do not matter to the SCOTUS when it comes to handing a political loss to Barack Obama. Some people, apparently including the Solicitor General, believe the Court has a "solemn obligation to respect the judgments of the democratically accountablebranches of government."

That is a quaint notion. If you held it before, Bush v. Gore ought to have disabused you of it. If not, at least take this opportunity to learn something. The court does not care about its standing as an institution, or at least the GOP justices don't. Maybe they might care about the law in a fairly obscure criminal case that has somehow made its way onto their plate, but in a political question you can expect they will rule politically, and tack on legal decisions as a post hoc formality.