DUMB LIKE A FOX.

Is Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts dumb like a fox?

The Supreme Court’s decision upholding ObamaCare is really the decision of Chief Justice John Roberts.  Large parts of it, including his lengthy attack on the constitutionality of the individual mandate to buy insurance, are his alone, since he wasn’t able to get the liberals or dissenters on the conservative wing of the court to sign off on it.

The only way Roberts could get a majority to uphold the law — and thus assign the opinion to himself, the prerogative of the Chief Justice — was to join with the liberal wing on the narrow question of whether the mandate was in fact a tax even if President Obama and Congress denied it was.  

By upholding the law, Roberts sheltered the court from liberal criticism.  At the same time he asserted at least two powerful holdings that pushed the authority of the court further than it had ever gone before.   Roberts “asserts the court’s power over two hugely important constitutional questions, the Commerce Clause authority and the spending clause.   In both instances he imposes unprecedented limitations on Congress.  

No court has gone as far as Roberts did in telling Congress the limits to what it can do under the Commerce Clause, for example.  The decision isn’t necessarily law since the conservatives — Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy — refused to sign off on it.  But they made the same points in their dissent, so this and future courts are likely to follow the reasoning of the majority on this question.

Roberts also went further than any previous court in finding limits to how Congress can dictate the terms of programs administered by the states.   He ruled that it was unconstitutional for Congress to threaten the states with the loss of all their Medicaid funding if they didn’t vastly expand eligibility for the program.

By asserting that Obamacare is funded by taxes, it now becomes just another tax increase that the Democrats will have to defend.  Not only is it a tax, it may be the biggest tax increase in history.  It is so unpopular it will drive more people out to vote, especially doctors.  A Rasmussen poll this month found that 52% of likely voters want Obamacare repealed.  Obama is trying to avoid speaking about it in his reelection efforts; this victory puts him in an awkward position. Mitt Romney has said the first thing he will do when he becomes president is sign an Executive Order exempting all 50 states from Obamacare.

This decision will go down as one of the most significant rulings coming from the Supreme Court ever.  Instead of continuing the 200 years of lumping government expansion of power under the Commerce Clause, the Supreme Court has now turned to the Taxing Clause to authorize massive new regulations.

 Here is what this decision has done;
1. Obamacare has been outed--by the authoritative voice of the nation's highest court-as a fraud. Yes the administration pitched it as a "penalty," as something that would not carry with it the burdensome label and politically repulsive thought of a tax.  But Chief Justice Roberts seduced the four Obama supporters on the bench into agreeing that President Obama had in fact lied to the nation all through his 2008 campaign.  Promising tax-cuts for 95% of the nation (a promise wrapped in a lie all its own), he has instead raised taxes--primarily on middle class families to the tune of $1.7 trillion dollars for the next decade.

2. The commerce clause has been severely restricted.  Roberts sided with the conservative wing of the court in asserting rightly that the Congress can't wander into a grey area of regulation, by attempting to force behavior of the population through manipulation of the commerce clause.  The court rightly examined and asserted that the legislature has no right to legislate what people choose not to do.  Punishments can not be levied on inaction.  And if they attempt to do so, they must come in the form of a tax that the nation has recourse to change and remove through the electoral process.

3. The true cost to America's middle class was unveiled.  Hiking taxes by close to $5 billion, with an additional $5 billion in medicare cuts, didn't close the loophole, no matter how much President Obama attempted to argue that it would.  In reality the middle class families of America--already under assault by a horrible economy with limited prospects of improvement--will be forced to fork over another $1.7 trillion in forward looking deficits.  Yes the families who earn $60-$90,000 per year will be the ones who make too much to qualify for the low income freebies, and not be making enough to be able to afford plans that they can buy in to.  It will be these families who will be punitively crunched with this penalizing tax called Obamacare, and the Roberts' decision has removed the veil to allow this to be seen.

4. Perhaps the most important thing of all, the Roberts' decision may very well hand Governor Mitt Romney a 40 state victory in the upcoming elections.  The Tea Party has been reignited.  Grassroots groups have reawakened.  And the roar of 2010 will be a distant memory when the voters take Governor Romney's advice and change Obamacare by removing President Obama.

I must admit that I was somewhat worried about the political outcomes of the case, had the justices thrown out the law altogether because, that would have neutralized one of the most glaring differences between the two sets of solutions being offered in this election cycle.

Re-electing President Obama would mean the full implementation of the biggest small-business-killer ever invented by the Congress--Obamacare.  Choose another path and you will set a course for the complete repeal of Obamacare, and the beginning of a new day for small business owners across the nation.

The choice is simple.  And John Roberts was the secret weapon that made it all happen, by out-thinking everybody, and staying true to the Constitution.
I think he may very well be dumb like a fox.