The Supreme Court verdict upon Obamacare will prove a key point of conversation in the November election. The Obama administration has stated repeatedly that the penalty that accompanies non-purchase of Health Insurance is not a tax. They have stated that it is designed to even out the costs accruing from hospital treatment of uninsured individuals. The issue at stake here is not what the penalty is, though that is an important constitutional point. What is in the viewfinder here is the political implication of the court's decision.
The exposure of the penalty as a tax has given the GOP, and especially Mitt Romney, the strongest possible boost at exactly the right time ahead of the November election. Five months out, the GOP can combine the message on economic recovery with a characterization of Barack Obama as a profligate, tax-and-spend president with an agenda. The GOP must take the European health care model, with high taxes combined with inefficiency and average service, and ask the American people whether they want to go down that road.
This side of Obama, that he is a European-style president with a European-style agenda, has been under-emphasized. Obama obviously views continental Europe with a high degree of admiration, highlighted by his close friendship with the French Socialist President, Francois Hollande. The European model contains big government, restricted freedoms, high welfare, high taxes, high bureaucracy, restrictive business conditions, multiculturalism, and very low economic growth. These conditions are the antithesis of the American model, which emphasizes individual responsibility, minimal government interference and freedom of choice and expression. Europe consists of post-liberal democracies, where the freedom of the individual is suppressed to benefit the collective. To be viewed as in favor of such a doomed and destructive model could do massive damage to Obama, if the idea can be articulated clearly.
In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts stated that:
"Members of this court are invested with the authority to interpret the law; we posses neither the expertize nor the prerogative to make policy judgements. Those decisions are entrusted to our nations elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them"
In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts stated that:
"Members of this court are invested with the authority to interpret the law; we posses neither the expertize nor the prerogative to make policy judgements. Those decisions are entrusted to our nations elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them"
Mitt Romney has to encourage the US electorate to hold president Obama to account for his policies. It is not the task of the Supreme Court to rule against Obamacare if it is constitutionally valid, no matter what conservatives say. It is the task of the American people to vote against a Euro-Socialist model, and that message must be articulated clearly. Permit, if you would, an example:
"President Obama has shown, by his actions and his ideology, that he supports the kind of policies that have brought Europe to the point of economic disaster. The American spirit has always emphasized free choice and free action over living government-dictated lives. If we wanted to be told what to do by the government, we could move to Europe. President Obama would like to bring that system here, and for that reason it's time to elect a president who will take a stand for freedom!"
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