Author and political analyst
President Obama and top Democrats have repeatedly exuded cautious
confidence that the Supreme Court will uphold part, or most, of the
Affordable Care Act. But underneath their strained optimism, the Obama
administration almost certainly knows that politics, not law, will ram
its way into the court's final decision. There was never much doubt that
the health care law would face rough sledding from the court's four
ultra conservatives. The tip-off of that came quickly. The four judge's
hard line challenge to the government's position during oral arguments
signaled that they leaned heavily toward scrapping the law. The
ostensible hook that the conservatives latched onto to assail the law
was that the individual mandate is an unlawful infringement on
individual liberty. It allegedly forces Americans to buy insurance.
Nowhere does the Constitution confer that power on Congress or the
executive branch.
That's just the start.
Polls
show that a slender majority of Americans want to dump all or parts of
the law. This includes some Democrats. Despite loud protests that they
are not swayed by public opinion or ideological beliefs, the court
conservatives are, and the polls give even more ammunition to them. But
even without the polls, the GOP and ultra conservatives waged their own
very public and relentless war on the health care reform law from the
moment that Obama proposed it. They claim that it is too costly, too
overburdening on businesses, too unpopular with a majority of Americans,
and that the law is an unwarranted infringement on the power of states
to regulate health care and private insurers and health providers to
offer it, price it and administer it.
A decision to scrap the health care law will be the political icing
on the cake for a court that has done everything it could to tip the
political scales back toward the GOP. The first nudge was the Citizens
United ruling that virtually gives corporations and the super rich
unrestricted license to pour any amount of money they see fit into
political campaigns. The conservatives made a preposterous twist of the
14th Amendment to confer individual rights and freedoms on business
entities to justify the decision. The ruling was a clear reaction to the
shock of the 2008 presidential campaign. The shock was that Obama and
the Democrats, for one of the rare times, beat the GOP at its own
fundraising game. It raised tens of millions, with a good chunk of that
coming from Wall Street and wealthy donors. These are the donors that
traditionally give lop sided amounts of money to the GOP presidential
candidate's coffers. The ruling was aimed at demolishing the campaign
fundraising field and insuring that in 2012, and future presidential
campaigns, that the GOP reasserts its financial supremacy. In the era
where money not just dominates but virtually buys elections, the side
that maintains the top heavy edge in funding will win elections outright
or at the very least insure that it will always be competitive.
The Supreme Court conservatives continued their blatant political assault with the recent ruling in the
Knox v. SEIU
case. It virtually mandates that unions can't collect dues from
non-union members even when the unions are fighting for wage and job
protection rights that affect those not in the unions. The ruling
ostensibly upholds individual liberty. But the result is that it will
severely cripple public employee union's ability to raise the monies
necessary to vigorously fight for labor protections which is exactly the
intent of the ruling. The decision gives a legal cover to GOP governors
to further sledgehammer public employee unions in their states.
Next up is affirmative action. The court almost certainly will use
the suit by a white former Texas student against the University of
Texas's modest affirmative action program to once and for all dump
affirmative action in education. This will have a ripple effect
throughout all government and even corporate affirmative action
programs.
The court's sharp upturn in the sheer number of conservative
decisions tells the real story of the court's naked political activism.
In the first five years under the watch of Chief Justice John Roberts,
the court issued conservative decisions in nearly 60 percent of the
cases. In the term that ended the year after Obama took office in 2009,
the percentage of conservative decisions shot up to 65 percent. This is
the largest number of overt conservative political decisions in over a
half century. There's no sign that that the court's conservative rulings
rampage will change.
The health care reform law if it is overturned will be the court
conservative's political coup de grace. It would come in the heat of
what will be a close most intense White House race and will earmark yet
another would be big political gift to the GOP. With that and its other
decisions, it has done everything it could to bend the law for its
blatant political ends.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a
frequent political commentator on MSNBC and a weekly co-host of the Al
Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How
Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate
editor of New America Media. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson
Report on KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson
No comments:
Post a Comment