http://www.boston.com/politicalintel...RcN/story.html
The Supreme Court’s health care ruling today is a political victory for President Obama if you simply accept Mitt Romney’s most recent statement prior to the decision being handed down.
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Speaking Tuesday in Virginia, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee girded for the ruling by saying if the nation’s highest court overturned what he derides as Obamacare, “then the first 3 1/2 years of this president’s term will have been wasted on something that has not helped the American people.”
Yet the court, with the vote of conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, today upheld the law’s constitutionality.
Accepting Romney’s logic, that would mean that the bulk of Obama’s first term in office was spent on something that helped the American people.
In addition, writing for the majority, Roberts said the mandate requiring able individuals to buy health insurance coverage would not pass muster under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, as critics claimed, but is legal and constitutional when viewed as a tax device to pay for that coverage.
Roberts is not someone Romney can dismiss, either. On his campaign website, he pledges to nominate Supreme Court justices “in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts,” as well as
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