The evidence is mounting that John Roberts changed his vote on the Affordable Care Act, and did it pretty late in the game. Veteran SCOTUS watchers spent the weekend noting that much of the jointly-signed dissent read like a majority decision, starting with the fact that it was jointly signed (normal for majority opinions, rare for dissents). The dissent also referred to the majority opinion as the "dissent" multiple times, suggesting that the statuses of the two documents were changed so last-minute that they couldn't even be corrected. Last, there were sections of the dissent that dealt with severability, which were useless—unless the writers thought the mandate was to be struck down.
This could all explain why Anton Scalia was so angry last Monday.
Now: does it matter? Republicans will want it to, badly. After Obama's comment a couple months ago that SCOTUS' overturning of the law would be "unprecedented," many conservatives immediately accused Obama of attempting to "intimidate" John Roberts. It seems that Roberts came to the same conclusion that Obama did about this decision's likely impact on the reputation of the Court. Whether he did this because of something Obama said we'll likely never know; but it sure can be made to seem that way, and there's no shortage of websites that are probably drafting their "Obama Bullies Roberts Into Changing Vote, Chicago Style" story right now.
| Related: The New Conservative Narratives Over Obamacare |
The problem the GOP faces over the high court's ratification of the Affordable Care Act—okay, one of the many problems they now face—is how to continue their narrative that the bill was "imposed" on the American people despite passing through all three branches of government. They're already trying out the line that Obama bait-and-switched the public on the tax angle, cloaking a middle class tax increase inside a social reform bill (because, as a socialist Democrat, he loves taxes for their own sake, right?). If Obama can be made to be seen as intimidating the Court, a line could be developed that he knew his big Waste Of Time health care bill was about to Titanic his presidency, and so threatened to break John Roberts's kneecaps if he didn't go along with it. Obamacare, imposed.
I don't buy this, and neither should you, but the question is whether anybody out in the electorate will believe it. I see people who are predisposed to distrust Obama as accepting this narrative, but they're pissed off about health care anyway, and were likely fired up about Roberts's decision, with or without complementary anti-Obama narratives; all this new line will do is make the decision go down a bit easier, as now we have an explanation that doesn't involve a George W Bush appointee voluntarily siding with four liberal justices over government expansion.
But if you're not predisposed to hate health care or Obama—i.e., if you're the moderate sector of the population that likes Obama, feels unsure about his handling of the economy, and most importantly, if you're one of the third of the country that still hasn't made up its mind about the ACA—then I don't see this Obama-bullies-the-Chief-Justice theory getting anywhere. The GOP still has to explain why health care reform is somehow a bad thing, and they still need to somehow sell a piece of legislation that became a law exactly how laws are supposed to become laws was imposed on an unsuspected public from on high. Obama as Chicago Mobster seems too peripheral to make much of a dent—which isn't to say it won't be added to the pile of criticisms.
Did Obama bully Roberts into changing his vote? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.
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