The ironies continue to build regarding the Republican opposition to Obamacare. As we all know by now the sticking point of the opposition to the plan, the individual mandate, was originally a Republican idea. The Heritage Foundation praised it, Newt Gingrich supported it, and Gov. Romney signed the bill that contained it and touted it as a model for the nation. The mandate was pushed by Republicans, especially conservative Republicans, as a means of making people act responsibly and avoid the need for insured people and taxpayers to cover the costs of medical care that insurance would have provided. It wasn’t until the president was able to make history by establishing universal health care that Republicans desperately sought a way to attack it and settled upon the individual mandate.

The law suit against the individual mandate initially focused on Mary Brown’s claim that it was unconstitutional to force her to buy insurance. However, she was dropped from the lawsuit after she got sick, required hospital treatment for which she could not pay, filed bankruptcy, lost her business, and stiffed the hospital for the medical costs, leaving the costs to be absorbed by higher rates for insured people.

Now, after years of railing against “activist judges” with Newt Gingrich stating his first act as president would be to defy the Supreme Court, Republicans are firmly behind (for the time being at least) the supremacy of the courts and the court’s responsibility to rule on the constitutionality of laws or parts of laws. Sen. Grassley says the president was “stupid” to suggest otherwise.I see only one area of consistency in the Republicans, the willingness to use any expedient argument to gain votes from those with short memories.

by Karl Schilling