Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama, Health Care Debate
On 'Real Time With Bill Maher' on Friday night, the progressive host questioned former GOP National Committee Chairman Michael Steele on the irony of being fired after the most expansive Republican gains in decades. His instinctive response?
It was simply a matter of "Republican justice."
He couldn't have said it better if he were a Democrat.
Sadly, Republican justice strikes yet again, as Reagan appointee and Florida U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson, declared that the provision requiring individuals to purchase health insurance by 2014 or be penalized is unconstitutional.
As a part of a 26-state challenge to the Obama Administration's signature achievement, Judge Vinson further states that the entire law is invalid because the individual mandate cannot be "severed" from the rest of the legislation, rendering the entire law in violation of the United States Constitution. While it is expected that the federal government will appeal the decision, seeking an immediate stay in the interim, ultimately this case is predicted to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court.
It continues to amaze me that a mandate first introduced by the GOP as an alternative to the Clinton health care overhaul is now being attacked at every turn because it was re-introduced by President Barack Obama. Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli expressed his amazement that while England's King George III concluded that the British subjects living in America could not be forced to buy British goods, Obama somehow feels he is more powerful than a King of England.
In other words: the President is being "uppity."
Try as I might, I've found no evidence of this outrage when Mitt Romney signed a similar law into state law in Massachusetts in 2006.
I'm still trying to determine why conservative education and research institution, The Heritage Foundation, embraced an individual mandate in the 1990s.
And I can't seem to find an inkling of GOP disapproval when former President Richard Nixon favored mandating employers provide health care in the 1970s.
Apparently, elephants do forget.
Before Obama, individual mandates were the American Way, ushering in an age of so-called personal responsibility. Yet now the GOP considers it "overreach" to not only help underprivileged citizens, but to demand they help themselves.
I'm not naming any names, but some people need to make up their minds.
UCLA School of Law professor, Adam Winkle, points out that "the individual mandate is not really so unprecedented." He writes, "In fact, the founding fathers adopted the first 'individual mandate' back in 1792. It required individuals to outfit themselves with guns and ammunition, even if they had to buy those items from private sellers."
So, mandating guns, good. Mandating health care? Not so much.
The moral of the story is that the Republicans remain the "Party of No." As long as President Obama remains in charge, any idea he proposes will be considered a detriment to the American people. Even if they thought of it first.
How's that for good old fashioned Republican justice?