In 1969, Penny Chenery watched nervously for the results of a coin toss. She had made a deal with Ogden Phipps . There were three foals expected from a champion race horse named Bold Ruler. The person winning the toss got first choice between two foals to be born in 1969. The loser got second choice, but as a consolation prize, also got the only foal to be born in 1970. Ogden Phipps won the toss and made his choice. No one remembers that horse. But the horse born in 1970 was Secretariat, one of the greatest race horses in American history. Ogden Phipps thought he had won the lottery. Instead, he missed out on the chance of a life time.
Half the conservative pundits think John Roberts is brilliant, the other half think he is a RINO who caved to liberal pressure. Liberal pundits started out celebrating, but haven’t said much lately. Perhaps the following explains why:
The Republican base is beyond energized. If Obama got any bounce from this decision it has long since disappeared.
Some Republican Governors have already started announcing plans to refuse the Medicaid expansion. This will go one way or the other very fast. If other states join in, as I expect, than Obamacare is doomed. You can’t have national health care with half the nation refusing to participate.
Republicans are already talking about repealing the individual mandate tax through reconciliation. Even Democrats agree that the Supreme Court decision makes that possible. That only requires 51% of the vote in the Senate. Of course Republicans have to win control of the Senate to do that. Prior to this decision, no one thought repeal of Obamacare was possible.
Republicans are going to use Obamacare to run against all those Democratic senators up for re-election and the Democrats are running very scared. Money is pouring into Romney’s campaign, Obama is sending out e-mails from Air Force One begging for money.
I also gave some serious thought to what would have happened if Obamacare had been overturned by the court, on a 5-4 decision. I was one of those people praying for that to happen. Perhaps I should have given this more thought. Following is what I think would have happened:
The main stream media would have gone ballistic about a hyper-partisan Supreme Court. We would have been reminded of the terrible decision on Bush vs Gore. This would have been painted as a uniquely partisan and activist court. The Supreme Court would have suffered major damage to its credibility. The main stream media would have been wrong, but that would not have slowed them down.
The media would have also run non-stop sob stories about people losing their insurance because of the repeal of Obamacare. This would be labeled as the death of the dream of universal health care for all. We would have been reminded that the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world without universal health care. There would be little or no coverage of the cost or the massive government regulations.
Mitt Romney would be under heavy pressure to declare what, specifically, he would propose to take the place of Obamacare. Odds are that he would cave into liberal pressure and offer compromise on the worst provisions.
Obama would have been given a campaign issue that could transcend the pathetic economy. It just might have given him his best chance at re-election.
Republicans are too busy whining about “losing” to consider the cost of winning. So far, the fall out from this decision seems to have hurt Obama and helped Romney. It would be small comfort to those opposed to Obamacare to see it overturned but then watch Obama get re-elected. In retrospect, even if Roberts got it all wrong, it just might have saved Republicans from a self-inflicted disaster.
On September 10, 2001, Steve Scheibner was supposed to fly American Airlines Flight 11 the following day. He was bumped by a more senior pilot, who was killed on September 11, 2001. Sometimes, you do win by losing.
http://pastorron7.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/pilot-of-flight-11-bumped-on-910/
TDM