Repugs change horses in midstream and no one seems to notice

How Republicans made it possible for the Supreme Court to rule against the individual mandate
By Ezra Klein 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/06/25/why-the-supreme-court-might-rule-against-the-mandate/

EXCERPT: Over the past two years, the Republican Party has slowly been building a permission structure for the five Republicans on the Supreme Court to feel comfortable doing something nobody thought they could do: Violate the existing understanding of the Commerce Clause and, in perhaps the most significant moment of judicial activism since the New Deal, overturn either all or part of the Affordable Care Act.

The first step was, perhaps, the hardest: The Republican Party had to take an official and unanimous stand against the wisdom and constitutionality of the individual mandate. Typically, it’s not that difficult for the opposition party to oppose the least popular element in the majority party’s largest initiative. But the individual mandate was a policy idea Republicans had thought of in the late-1980s and supported for two decades. They had, in effect, to convince every Republican to say that the policy they had been supporting was an unconstitutional assault on liberty.

But they succeeded. In December 2009 every Senate Republican voted to call the individual mandate unconstitutional. They did this even though a number of them had their names on bills that included an individual mandate. (For more on the political history of the mandate, see this post.)  (Note from StarWisdom: It's easy for the GOP to get their Bubble-dwelling voters to buy whatever they're selling, even if it is the exact opposite of what they sold them a year or so ago -- just tell Rush Limbaugh and FOX News to broadcast their new view, as if they'd never had another one that was diametrically opposed to it. If Obama adopts RomneyCare from Massachusetts asking for an individual mandate just like Romney had, BUT Romney is now running against Obama...OOPS--Make an immediate 180 degree turn and start calling RomneyCare ObamaCare, pretending Republicans were never involved with such a thing. You can be sure the dittoheads will buy it.  Conservative voters will listen to their leaders, no matter what they are peddling.  That's why Rush Limbaugh calls them "my dittoheads."  And they don't even take offense at that -- I guess they think it's an honor to be a dittohead of their great-in-girth leader (am shaking my head in cynical wonderment at their willingness to swallow anything that is thrown at them by the right wing media and then send it out as "truth" in their e-mails)

For full article, go to: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/06/25/why-the-supreme-court-might-rule-against-the-mandate/