Morning Jolt - The End of Obamacare?

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

March 29, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. The End of Obamacare?

2. It's Difficult to Boycott Those You Already Disdain

3. Vice President Biden, Super Genius, Strikes Again

4. Addendum

Here's your Thursday Morning Jolt!

Enjoy.

Jim

1. The End of Obamacare?

Boy, a direct hit on the thermal exhaust port really will cause a chain reaction, huh?

The Los Angeles Times headline reads: "Justices poised to strike down entire healthcare law":

The Supreme Court's conservative justices said Wednesday they are prepared to strike down President Obama's healthcare law entirely.

Picking up where they left off Tuesday, the conservatives said they thought a decision striking down the law's controversial individual mandate to purchase health insurance means the whole statute should fall with it.

The court's conservatives sounded as though they had determined for themselves that the 2,700-page measure must be declared unconstitutional.

"One way or another, Congress will have to revisit it in toto," said Justice Antonin Scalia.

Agreeing, Justice Anthony Kennedy said it would be an "extreme proposition" to allow the various insurance regulations to stand after the mandate was struck down.

The framing of the rest of the article grates on Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom:

Well, "conservative" Justices. The liberal justices, some of whom would prefer it if they'd taken an oath to the Canadian or South African Constitutions, one imagines, believe there's no need to wreck all the goodly social justice just because those well-intentioned, moral legislators who pushed it on us failed to include a severability clause and accidentally overstepped their authority with respect to the (hoary, flawed) Constitution. After all, what's the High Court for if not to provide a sometimes clumsy legislative majority with the proper sculpting and legal fixes to their otherwise just and righteous laws?

I concur with Bryan Preston, in that I can't quite believe that anyone is arguing, "well, un-doing a law would be a mess, so you might as well leave it be." Hey, everybody, reading a suspect Miranda rights is going to be a hassle, so you know, just keep doing what you're doing! Hey, everybody, desegregating the schools is just going to be a logistical nightmare, so just keep on with the status quo. Hey, look, Florida violated the Constitution by not giving this guy Gideon a lawyer, but implementing the changes from this is going to be a pain, so, hey, let's just avert our eyes from the whole thing.

Preston writes at Pajamas Media:

Salvaging the bad work of Congress isn't the court's job. The court is supposed to rule whether the law is constitutional or not and let the legislative and executive branches sort out the consequences. The Democratic Congress chose not to include severability.

After today's arguments, and maybe as soon as this evening but before Friday, the justices will hold a preliminary vote on whether ObamaCare is constitutional. We will not know the outcome of that vote for some time, probably at least a couple of months. But glimpses of where the court is going may emerge, as the preliminary vote will sort the sides out, and the senior justices on both sides will either assign other justices to write the opinions for and against, or write them themselves. Right now it's looking like a 5-4 to strike down the entire law, and I'm guessing that Chief Justice Roberts ends up writing the majority opinion and Associate Justice Ginsberg writes the dissent.

Meanwhile, based on his comments so far, I expect Jeffrey Toobin to give all forthcoming updates in long black robes and pale makeup out of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal or Woody Allen's Death Knocks. His analysis on Wednesday:

This still looks like a train wreck for the Obama Administration, and it may also be a plane wreck. This entire law is now in serious trouble. It also seems that the individual mandate is doomed. I mean, Anthony Kennedy spent much of this morning talking about if we strike down the individual mandate, how should we handle the rest of the law? Now, it is less clear that they are going to strike down the whole law. There does seem to be some controversy in the court about that. Certainly there are some members of the court, Antonin Scalia, Justice Alito, who want to strike down the entire law, but it seemed almost a foregone conclusion today that they were going to strike down the individual mandate, and the only question is does the whole law go out the window with it?

Whitfield: Oh, my goodness. Okay, so I have got about 20 seconds or so left. How might this impact arguments later on this afternoon, Jeff?

Toobin: Well, it's hard to imagine how things could be going much worse for the Obama Administration, but now they're going to be dealing with the Medicaid portion, and they may decide to get rid of that as well.

Ask not for whom the Toobin analysis tolls; it tolls for thee, Obamacare!

2. It's Difficult to Boycott Those You Already Disdain

An observation about the notion of boycotts of political figures and entertainers: It's quite hard for conservatives to persuade a liberal audience to stop listening to a liberal figure, and it's quite hard for liberals to persuade a conservative audience to stop listening to a conservative figure.

To persuade conservatives to stop listening to a conservative figure like Rush, he would have to do something that offended the conservatives in his audience. To get liberals to stop watching Bill Maher, he would have to do something that really offends them, and clearly, the names he has called Palin don't clear the bar. Call me cynical, but I don't think there's anything that he could say about Palin that would get most Maher watchers to recoil and declare, "That's out of line."

Sure, some advertisers will always be squeamish. But you'll notice that almost everybody who's been known for controversy comes back in one form or another: Don Imus, Howard Stern, Madonna, Donald Trump. Even Rosie O'Donnell had (and recently lost) her show on Oprah's new channel. Every once in a while, these figures fade away, such as Rick Sanchez or Andrew Dice Clay. But by and large, somebody, somewhere, will be willing to see if these figures can build an audience and attract advertisers, and give them another shot.

I've seen some folks quite irate about what Spike Lee did in an angry response to the Trayvon Martin shooting.

An elderly Florida couple has been caught in the cross hairs of the Trayvon Martin shooting case due to an incorrect tweet by Spike Lee and others.

The director retweeted an address said to belong to George Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin dead on Feb. 26, to his 250,000 followers, according to website thesmokinggun.com. But the address was incorrect and has caused the couple to go into hiding.

David McClain, 72, and his wife Elaine McClain, 70, are now living in a hotel and said they are concerned for their safety.

"We're afraid for our lives," Elaine McClain told WKMG-TVin Orlando. McClain said her son's middle name is George and his last name is Zimmerman, but he hadn't lived at the residence since 1995.

On Twitter and elsewhere, I've heard people proudly proclaiming that they'll never watch another Spike Lee movie again.

Quick, what's the last Spike Lee movie you saw? I'm not even sure we should count Inside Man, which was entertaining because it was one of the few films Lee has made lately that wasn't meant to be a message movie -- it was a bank-heist thriller. So, perhaps some segment of the Morning Jolt subscriber base consists of diehard Spike Lee fans. But I'm going to guess the Venn diagram shows little overlap. The people most outraged about Lee's actions are, in all likelihood, not his regular audience. And his regular audience is probably inclined to chalk up Lee's actions as bad judgment in a fit of anger and forgive him.

So color me a little skeptical that a boycott of Spike Lee is about to take the nation by storm.

Anyway, the Washington Post notes:

The dark clouds hanging over Rush Limbaugh appear to be lifting.

Exactly one month after the conservative radio host sparked outrage by calling Georgetown law-school student Sandra Fluke"a slut" and "a prostitute" in a three-day diatribe, stations are standing by him, advertisers are trickling back to his program and the news media have moved on.

Liberal groups that organized petitions and boycotts against Limbaugh say that they intend to keep up the pressure and that they've had a lasting impact on the most popular radio host in America.

"The objective has been to show that there are real consequences when someone like Mr. Limbaugh or his company shows no accountability for his actions," says Angelo Carusone, who has been leading the anti-Limbaugh efforts for Media Matters for America, a Washington organization. "That is continuing."

At the same time, however, Carusone acknowledged that outrage is hard to sustain. "I think certainly the pressure has been reduced," he said. "To a certain extent, that's okay and acceptable. . . . Obviously, the intensity is gone, but the engagement remains high."

On Monday, the 600 or so radio stations that air Limbaugh's program were told by his syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, to resume running "barter" ads during his program. Stations are required to run these ads in exchange for paying discounted fees to Premiere to air Limbaugh's show. Premiere, which is owned by radio giant Clear Channel Communications, had suspended the "barter" requirement for two weeks in a move widely seen as a way to give advertisers a chance to lie low while Limbaugh was in the news.

Limbaugh has apologized for some of his statements about Fluke, whom he attacked after she spoke last month in favor of mandatory insurance coverage for contraception at an event sponsored by congressional Democrats.

Limbaugh's advertising losses may have been less than media accounts suggested. While more than 100 advertisers told Premiere that they didn't want to be associated with "controversial" radio programs of any kind in the wake of the flap, some of these companies weren't regular Limbaugh sponsors in the first place.

Carusone said most of the advertiser exodus over the past month appeared to be among companies whose ads aired only in regional or local markets, he said. "Fewer than five" nationwide sponsors of the program actually pulled out, he said.

Allahpundit can't help but scoff:

Team Boycott had an impressive run, though, no? Sure, they didn't get Clear Channel to pull him off the air. And only two radio stations nationwide dumped his show. And he lost "fewer than five" national sponsors by Media Matters's own admission. But hey: It's not easy to sustain politically calculated fake outrage for weeks on end, especially after an apology for the initial offense has been issued. Perseverance.

3. Vice President Biden, Super Genius, Strikes Again

There he goes again:

Gaffe-prone Vice President Joe Biden has done it again, this time mistakenly thanking"Dr. Pepper" instead of a Dr. Paper during an afternoon speech at a factory in Davenport, Iowa.

"So let me say it again: Thank you, Terry, and thank you, Dr. Pepper, and thank you, Chancellor -- Dr. Paper -- and thank you, Chancellor, for this partnership of yours. You are one of the reasons why -- you're literally one of the reasons why American companies are now insourcing instead of outsourcing," he said.

It's kind of amazing that eloquence -- the ability to clearly and compellingly articulate one's ideas, values, and message -- was deemed to be perhaps the single most important trait in a national leader in the 2008 presidential race to fans of President Obama, but only at the presidential level. Vice President Super Gaffe is perfectly okay, apparently.

Vice President Biden later thanked Doctors Zhivago, J, Van Helsing, Gonzo, Moreau, Dolittle, Jeckyl, House, Watson, and McCoy.

Matt noted, "Doctors Dre, John, Evil, Demento and No were miffed at the snub."

But today the vice president finally won over Tina Korbe:

No, I'm genuinely thrilled that Joe Biden thanked Dr. Pepper. I, too, am grateful for all that Dr. Pepper has brought to my life. For as long as I can remember, it's been my mom's soft drink of choice. I assume that's why it has such a reassuring resonance for me, why I actually feel sophisticated -- that's right, sophisticated! -- when I drink it. At various points in my life, it has meant breakfast, lunch and dinner -- yes, all three -- to me.

4. Addendum

The great Toby Harnden watches Senator Marco Rubio endorse Mitt Romney on Hannity Wednesday night and notices, "Rubio talking about GOP primary campaign in past tense. Lot of people will be following suit soon."