The upholding of the individual mandate
is not just a defeat for movement wingnuts, the fact that it was
Chief Justice Roberts and not Justice Kennedy who defied them may be a
rather bigger "tell."
The Supreme Court has been handing down 5-4 decisions for quite a while.
When O'Connor retired, the wingnuts thought that they would finally have
the reliable partisan vote in their favor that would allow them to
overturn Roe vs Wade, gut the civil rights act and a dozen other
projects they could never achieve through Congress. Instead the court
shifted to the right, but not nearly as much as the repugicans wanted, and
Kennedy became the swing vote in a series of 5-4 decisions.
Roberts did vote for Citizens United, but he isn't a Scalia or a
Renquist. Faced with the choice of delivering for the extreme right,
Roberts decided to keep his reputation intact.
That vote is going to have consequences. There are no shades of
agreement for movement conservatives, you are either with them 100% or a
vile traitor and enemy. Expect the right to denounce Robert's vote as
craven, giving in to pressure from the left, then give him the Faux News
treatment till they have safely driven him out of their fold.
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