Gov. Brown celebrates ObamaCare ruling

Steven Greenhut: Gov. Jerry Brown is happy with the Supreme Court’s ObamaCare ruling: “Today’s dramatic Supreme Court ruling removes the last roadblock to fulfilling President Obama’s historic plan to bring health care to millions of uninsured citizens.”

That makes sense. The court decided that the individual mandate isn’t really a mandate — but simply a tax. And Gov. Brown believes that the state and the country can pretty much tax its way out of its fiscal problems. Figures, a conservative justice appointed by President Bush, John Roberts, authored the opinion. Conservatives have little principled opposition to big government — they just have different ideas of how that government should be used.

Now Roberts has grown in office, as Republican appointees typically do, and has decided that as long as an edict offers a tax alternative (submit or we will tax you), then it isn’t really an edict after all. Conservatives believe in government taxation powers — how else can we afford to invade Iraq and other countries, or pay for drones to police our skies and guards to control the border? — so it’s not a surprise that they will come down on the side of government power.

And now Republicans, really the Stupid Party, have a presidential candidate particularly ill-suited to fight this battle given that he still defends the RomneyCare legislation he signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts. I still think this decision — awful as it is — will slightly benefit the GOP for November, but that’s a rather small consolation. And it will embolden Brown and California’s big-government liberals.

JUNE 28, 2012