Republicans: Et tu, John Roberts?

Today was a crazy day at the office with a large commercial closing and chaos with the installation with a new computer system server.  Hence, until now, I haven't had a chance to comment on today's stunning surprise of this morning's U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding "Obamacare" as the wingnuts like to call it.  It's been fun watching the far right and the Tea Party go utterly berserk over the ruling and seeing Chief Justice Roberts be viewed as a Judas by the Kool-Aid drinkers.  As I noted last night - especially if one claims to give any deference to the Gospel message - it is a national disgrace that so many Americans are viewed as human trash by the Republican Party ans its Christofascist base.  Worse yet, Americans who do have health care coverage pay literally twice or more the costs paid for more expansive health care in every other industrialized nation.  A piece in Politico looks at the shock and spewing spittle among Republicans over what they view as Justice Roberts' betrayal.  Here are highlights:

Republicans on Capitol Hill were in a state of shock Thursday that Chief Justice John Roberts, their longtime ally on the court, sided with liberals in upholding the health care law.

I thought he was the champion of limited government,” Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) told POLITICO. Wilson famously yelled “You lie!” to the president during his 2009 health care speech before a joint session of Congress.

 Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said he was “surprised” by Roberts and “uneasy” about the court’s interpretation that the individual mandate was constitutional as a tax, but not under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Sessions was struggling to understand how Roberts reached that key conclusion.
“I am stunned and shocked, somewhat confused, by the decision, by the nature of the decision, by the nature of the majority and by the nature of the reasoning,” said Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on the floor. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a tea party favorite, also described himself as “shocked” by the turn of events.

And, grasping for an explanation, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) remarked: “As a lawyer, I can see where Roberts is concerned about the institution and maybe that explains it?

Roberts — the architect of the 2010 Citizens United ruling that opened the door to unlimited spending by outside groups in elections and a frequent boogeyman of the left — joined the court’s four liberal justices in saying that Congress had the authority to force most Americans to buy health insurance through its constitutional powers of taxation. The court’s three conservative justices, along with swing vote Anthony Kennedy, voted to strike down the law in its entirety.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a frequent critic of Roberts’s decisions in the court, said he sees this week’s decisions as “efforts by the chief justice to move the court back to the center line when it came to political neutraility.”

“The earlier decision in Bush v. Gore and Citizens United raise serious questions about the drift by the court,” Durbin said. “Some of the comments being made by Justice [Antonin] Scalia from the bench, where it sounded he was just quoting Fox News verbatim, really didn’t enhance the image of the court in the mind of the American public.”

We may never know what ultimately motivated Roberts.  It may be something as simple as the fact that he realized that the health care system before ACA in this country was broken and morally wrong.  Some suggest that Scalia's obnoxiousness and extremism may have tilted Roberts' decision.  Whatever the cause, I am glad that Justice Roberts put the nation and lies of millions of citizens ahead of partisan politics and greed.