Did A Conservative Chief Justice Give Liberals A Victory?

I'm talking about the Obamacare decision, of course.  And, frankly, I wouldn't counsel liberals to think that John Roberts is your new best friend.

Yes, you can be pleased with the outcome:  the ACA was, for the most part, saved.  But it was saved by a Chief Justice who made a political calculation that, as much as he wanted to line up with the four dissenters (shame on you, Anthony Kennedy!) and take out not only health care reform but the Commerce Clause itself, this was the wrong case with which to do it.  Too much visibility, too much public contentiousness, too close to a national election that itself is too close to call.  No, if you're going to amend the Constitution from the bench, as Scalia did in Heller, you've got to do it when the attention of most people is diverted elsewhere.

So Roberts, a canny political operator, made a canny political decision, and allowed most of the ACA to survive based upon Congress' power to tax.  By doing so, he hands Romney a rhetorical weapon ("It's a tax increase!") in the guise of bipartisanship, and sends a very strong signal that, if the right case comes along, he will join his brethren on the far right and take the Commerce Clause back to the nineteenth century.

Which is just one more example of why this election is so critical, and why Obama MUST win it.  Two members of the Gang of Four that opposed Obamacare--Scalia and Kennedy--are likely to retire in the next four years.  An Obama victory, especially combined with a Senate that remains in Democratic hands, could safeguard constitutional law in the United States for years to come.  Can you imagine what a Romney victory would do instead?

Yes, enjoy the survival of Obamacare.  But fight like hell for a government in which reform is the rule, not an inadvertent act of charity from a Chief Justice with an agenda in which you have no real place.