WyBlog

[Guest post] Pushed or Fell?

I hadn't realized that Mitt Romney, who wishes to become our next president, is all for what they call judicial extremism. We're all aware that the current Supreme Court, under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts, could be the most extremely conservative court ever. So clearly, in Chief Justice Roberts, the candidate had everything he could have wished for. Yet some days after Justice Roberts cast one vote he disapproved of - the vote that saved the Affordable Care Act - Romney declared that Justice Roberts is no longer conservative enough.

"No longer conservative enough" says Mitt about the man who led the court to strike down hard-won clean election laws; made it more difficult for women to sue for equal pay; squashed a number of class action suits, and consistently favored large corporations over the individual citizen.

Now, the polls show that the issue on which President Obama has the clearest lead is the makeup of the Supreme Court. That seems so clear it makes me wonder how smart is Mitt Romney coming out against the Chief Justice? Then again, it could be said that taking this seemingly unpopular position is a measure of how committed Mitt is to his philosophic convictions. Seriously? If there is anything we've learned about this man over the endless months of his candidacy it is that he changes his convictions as often as his shirt. Okay, so we've let him get away with it so far. But, when he is already polling so low on the issue, to change his mind about the man who was for so long his idea of what a Chief Justice should be - I mean, how dumb is that?

Actually, much of Romney's problem is caused by the GOP leadership. On a couple levels, the weird rift between Romney and the rest of the party makes sense. Congressional leaders have different imperatives. They want to trip up Democrats, they want to win majorities, and they're under enormous pressure to build a legislative record that shows bipartisan opposition to key pieces of "Obamacare". From that arguably myopic perspective running with the tax attack makes some sense. But, of course, attacking the mandate as a tax is exactly what movement conservatives have done. It would've made sense to defer to the Romney camp's original view that the mandate is a penalty - not a tax - that the Court should have struck down.

Unfortunately for Romney, the GOP cheerleaders like the Wall Street Journal editorial board aren't in the business of making sense, and they hammered their candidate-presumptive for not getting with the GOP program. Predictably, Mr Romney tucked in his tail and has awkwardly acquiesced. And, predictably, Mr Romney is now getting grief for having claimed he didn't hike taxes in Massachusetts. On the campaign trail, predictably, Obama is sticking it to Mr Romney for spineless flip-floppery.

And when they examine the corpse of the Romney campaign in November, the first question that will be asked is, "Was he pushed or did he fall?"

Posted at 12:11 by Rich Stelt   [/guest/rich]   Comments | Perm Link |
Technorati Tags: Romney Obama Roberts GOP ACA   |   Tweet