The Ridiculous Tax-Penalty Debate

This sort of pissing contest is what made the Republican Primary clown show so entertaining this year, but I don't think any general election issue has proved as ridiculously entertaining as the response in the past week to the health care ruling.

Of course, the original schadenfreude of seeing the right betrayed by a conservative Chief Justice, and the resulting justifications, provided a great opening salvo. But I think my first laugh-out-loud moment came when conservative bloggers started writing about how the courts upholding ObamaCare actually hurt the president.

Here is Erick Erickson at RedState:
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It seems very, very clear to me in reviewing John Roberts’ decision that he is playing a much longer game than us and can afford to with a life tenure. And he probably just handed Mitt Romney the White House.
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That's right, ObamaCare winning just handed Romney the White House. The logical twisting is astounding.

Let's start with a simple exercise and ask what would happen in the health care reform was shot down. By Erickson's logic, that would be good for Obama, right? To have centerpiece legislation, and the only legislation to be commonly referenced using Obama's name, thrown out as unconstitutional would have been just wonderful for the White House. Frankly, this suggestion is ridiculous on its face, and I think initial misreadings by CNN and Fox of the court rulings show that the media would not have gone with such a ludicrous narrative

The logic Erickson uses is that this court decision fires up the right-wing base and puts the health care issue back in the political realm. The mistake he makes, of course, is that this issue was always principally a political one. That is why so many of us on the left have been frustrated by conservatives who profess a hatred of judicial activism trying to push a legislative issue into the hands of the courts. Now sure, Republicans have used this ruling to bump fundraising, but so would Democrats, and everybody was prepared to make a push regardless of what the court ruled.

But now we have entered a new and equally ridiculous stage of the fight: the tax vs. penalty debate.

I admit out side has stumbled a little here too. Obama has said the individual mandate is protected by the taxing authority but is not technically a tax. But there has been for more of a cry on the right for this to be labeled a tax. Not a penalty. A taxing, taxy, taxerific tax tax.

Problem is Mitt Romney's campaign hasn't unified around that message in a coherent way, with Romney staffers first saying the mandate was a penalty, then Romney himself saying it's a tax.

Hilarity. But not for the reason so many Beltway pundits think. This is an insane debate to be having in the first place, and frankly, our side should just stop talking about this issue at all, kick back, and watch Romeny burn his own messaging department to the ground. But let me explain something as a public service to all involved.

NOBODY CARES!!!!!!

The Obama camp in coming months, and they will realize this, wants to brag about ObamaCare and the way it will bring healthcare to the American people. The right will argue that it is too expensive to make sick children well unless they are rich. In fact, they spent months arguing that making sick children well was a violation of the constitution!

The Supreme Court ruling did an important thing in stating the Republicans were wrong. Obama will be helped by the court ruling because he won, not because of debates about the Commerce Clause or the use of judicial restraint or whether there was a leprechaun sitting on John Robert's shoulder convincing him to rule in favor of ObamaCare by offering a big pot o' gold.

Mitt Romney was already running on the platform that Obama is a tax-and-spend liberal, despite the fact taxes have gone down for most Americans in the past four years. This court ruling doesn't change anything in that regards. The right will put out ads filled with lies regardless of what is happening in the world. They will try to create their own reality. They are counting on Americans not being able to assess what is happening around them with their own eyes. They will fail in this mission, and they know it. That's why they are so mad at Romney right now.

Grab some popcorn. This is gonna be a fun election for the blue team.