Carville Pre-Spins ObamaCare Defeat

It’s premature to assume that because the Obama administration’s defense of its signature health care law flopped during the first two days of SCOTUS hearings, that the law will be struck down. It’s going to be a close run thing, and all signs point to a 5-4 decision with Justice Anthony Kennedy being the swing vote.

It’s also premature to assume that if SCOTUS strikes down the individual mandate, the rest of ObamaCare dies too. The law as built does not include a severability clause, but courts have been known to re-write laws to suit whatever compromise they might attempt to achieve.

Democrat snake oil salesman James Carville is already out there pre-spinning its demise, just in case.

While the Obama administration fights to protect the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, Democratic strategist and CNN contributor James Carville said a Supreme Court overruling may not be such a bad thing for the president, politically.

“I think this will be the best thing that has ever happened to the Democratic Party,” Carville said Tuesday on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”

He added: “You know, what the Democrats are going to say, and it is completely justified, ‘We tried, we did something, go see a 5-4 Supreme Court majority’.”

It’s worth stepping back and noting that everything — every bloody thing — is political to James Carville. The Constitution never mattered to him or the vast majority of Democrats in this entire episode, and still doesn’t.

Democrats overall seem to be genuinely shocked that ObamaCare could fall. They seem genuinely shocked that there are in fact limits on the federal government’s powers, and that the court may find that they overstepped those limits. They never even took those limits into account when they wrote and passed ObamaCare. Carville’s spin says that as long as Democrats mean well, they should be able to do whatever they want. It’s a strong sign that they actually expect to lose, based on what we have all seen from SCOTUS this week.

Despite the Carville pre-spin, the reality is that ObamaCare has never been popular. A SCOTUS defeat will not help them. If the law had been popular, it might, and Carville’s argument about the SCOTUS majority would have some weight. But the law isn’t popular and most view it as a violation of their liberties and an impediment to real reform and to getting the economy back on track.  If it is struck down, that will be a powerful sign that this president and his Democrat party cannot be trusted with power. When they had total power and could have done something worthwhile, they rammed through a sweeping, partisan law that upset the constitutional order and derailed the economic recovery. It fundamentally changed the citizen’s relationship to the government. They wasted the nation’s time on an irresponsible project that ended up being tossed into the trash. They put the left’s political dreams above all else, and created a budget busting monster that had to be killed before it could wreck the whole country. The court had to step in to stop them. Give them power again, and they will just unleash another Godzilla on the Constitution.

So, nice try, Mr. Carville. But no sale.