Tuesday, July 3, 2012
If a Republican Congress had passed the ACA, and a Republican president had signed it, how would the SCOTUS have voted?
- by New Deal democrat
After all, Obamacare is similar to Romneycare, which in turn is based on a Heritage Foundation plan.
If you don't think the vote would have been the same, then it must be true that at least some Justices voted for purely partisan reasons.
h/t DougJ at Balloon Juice
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Kennedy's vote would have been the same. At his core he's a libertarian, and shows some intellectual consistency there.
Scalia and Thomas both would have voted to support the law. I'm not sure about Alito. Roberts would still remain in support, though not necessarily for reasons of consistency.
I suspect all of the more liberal justices would remain in the same position. So you're talking a 8-1 or 7-2 decision instead of a 5-4.
So Steve, you are basically saying that Scalia and Thomas are unfit to be Supreme Court Justices, since I assume that they are supposed to leave their partisan feelings aside, and vote solely upon what they honestly consider the judicial merits of a case to be.
Not that I disagree, mind you.
@Mongo - is there any doubt? Those 2 are everything that is wrong with the court these days.
If the Republican congress had passed the ACA? You mean, like, if Obama had asked for a tax cut? Or, like, if Pelosi had asked to let in fewer illegal aliens? Or, like, if Harry Reid had presented a bill requiring voters to prove they are who they are? La La Land indeed!
@Anon Maybe you weren't paying attention but the President has passed dozens of tax cuts. You may want to look that up.
Remember the individual mandate is a Republican idea originated in 1989 by the Heritage Foundation and supported by most Republicans up until the moment Obama co-opted it.
My answer is there never would have been a SCOTUS vote if it had been passed and signed by a Repub President b/c none of the Republican State AGs would have challenged it.
Essentially Roberts is also voting in a partisan manner. He only looked for a constitutional way to vote for the ACA after becoming worried about the public perception of the court and his role as chief justice. Therefore, his initial position was to vote in a partisan manner. Perhaps this case and his experience with it, especially being thrown under the bus by his conservative brethren, will cause him to be a better justice going forward. Not that I expect him to become less conservative in his views, but less willing to overturn precedent in order to achieve them.
Post a Comment