I think this is a smart, albeit frightening, analysis.
…what’s really intriguing about the Cuccinelli suit is that it’s what I’m calling a sort of aspirational view of the Constitution; Cuccinelli doesn’t like much about the 14th Amendment, the 17th Amendment, there’s whole chunks of the Constitution that he wants to do away with…He has a sort of cut-and-paste view of the Constitution.
I think this is not just about the Obama health care law, I think this is about a rather radical rewriting of the Constitution, and the sensibility that there are enough judges out there…President Bush appointed 1/3 of the sitting judges on the federal bench, and I think there’s a real hope that those judges are gonna not look at what the commerce clause has said, what precedent has said, what case law has said, what has happened in the courts since 1942, when the judges started thinking about the commerce Ccause, I think this is a lawsuit that aspires to something different…to fundamentally rewrite the Constitution, and I think that there’s a real hope that there’s enough judges out there, including maybe at the Supreme Court, who agree with that project, that they think they really have a shot at this.
Scary stuff, but let’s not underestimate Cuccinelli just because he seems cuckoo. He’s also an extremist, right-wing, anti-science, anti-reason radical, through and through, with a bizarre, fundamentalist, warped view of supposed “first principles,” one that diverges wildly from 200 years of jurisprudence, thousands of court rulings, etc. in this country. The scary thing is, when it comes to fanatics like Cuccinelli, they always believe they have the only window on the Truth, that everyone else is deluded or evil or whatever, and that it’s their divine task on Earth to set things right. We’ve seen this utopianism and absolutism in history many times before, and it almost always ends badly. Very badly. In this case, we could seriously pay the price for 8 years of George W. Bush and his push to appoint “conservatives” (actually, right-wing judicial activists) to the federal bench. As always, George W. Bush is the disastrous “gift” that keeps on giving, thanks to his selection by yet another federal court – the Supreme Court – stocked with “conservatives,” 10 years ago almost to the day…
UPDATE: Not Larry Sabato has some thoughts on the Democrats who enabled Cuccinelli in all of this. I can’t tell you how angry this makes me; why on earth would any Democrat have voted for this “Sideshow Bob” Marshall bill, when it was transparently – at the time, NOT “Monday morning QB’ing” here – part of an attempt to destroy “Obamacare?” I’m utterly flabbergasted at these people.
UPDATE #2: Ezra Klein has a fascinating take on this specific ruling. According to Klein, ditching the “individual mandate” while keeping the rest of the healthcare law intact – which it appears Judge Hudson did – “may sign the death warrant for private insurers in America” and lead to “the very constitutional, but decidedly non-conservative, single-payer path.” Wouldn’t that be the ultimate irony from Cooch’s push for “first principles?” Ha! On the other hand, this doesn’t change the underlying reality of Dubya appointing “1/3 of the sitting judges on the federal bench,” and that there are predominantly right-wingnuts. We will be living with these people, and their rulings, for many years to come…
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