"No, This Was Not The Better Outcome For Mitt" (ACA) by Alec MacGillis at the New Republic

[applegrove]

No, This Was Not The Better Outcome For Mitt

by Alec MacGillis at the New Republic

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/104494/no-was-not-the-better-outcome-mitt

"SNIP...................................

But I don’t buy it. Judging this the better outcome for Romney means seriously understating just how brutal the law’s rejection would have been for Obama. It would have allowed Romney to argue—to crow to the skies, surely—that Obama’s entire first term had been a giant zero: not only had he been unable to bring the economy back to full strength, but the issue he chose to focus on for the first two years of his term, when the economy was at its worst, had been proven a fool’s errand. It would, as Jon Chait put it before the ruling, have cast a “demoralizing stench of failure that would have come from having his largest achievement go to waste.”

And that’s not all. Romney has been in a bind on health care all campaign, given that he signed into the law the model for Obamacare. But a ruling against the law would have allowed Romney to lambast it on the court’s terms—as an unconstitutional overreach. The court’s negative imprimatur would be all that he would need to invoke to make the case against the law. Whereas, as Nate Cohn points out, the court’s upholding of the law will probably now enhance the law’s legitimacy in the eyes of some voters. And, crucially, it will now fall to Romney himself to lead the argument against Obamacare, and to the extent that he takes up this charge, it will bring into focus, as never before, just how compromised he is on this front. Yes, there would have been talk of what to do about health care had the law been thrown out, and this, too, would have brought attention to Romney’s record on the issue, and to just how bare the cupboard of reforms is that he and other Republicans are now offering as a “replacement” for the law. But I’m not sure the bareness of that cupboard would necessarily have been so damaging to the Republicans—the party’s lack of interest in doing anything to expand health coverage is hardly a new thing; in fact, it arguably helps define the modern GOP. Odds are, Romney and the Republicans would have simply avoided the subject as best they could, beyond ridiculing Obama for the law’s rejection. But if Romney now wants to rally voters against Obama, as the “this is good for Mitt” camp says he will be able to do, he will have to talk about the subject that is so very awkward for him.

And when he does so, when he makes the case for doing away with Obamacare, and Obama in turn makes the case for keeping it ("forward, not back&quot , Romney will be doing, as John Dickerson notes, exactly what he didn’t want to do this election: he will be turning it into a choice between two approaches, rather than a referendum on the incumbent who couldn’t even make sure his biggest achievement passed constitutional muster. No, this is not good for Mitt.

........................................SNIP"

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Agreed. This was a big, big win for Obama.

It makes Romney's job far more difficult - hopefully impossible.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

2. Yeah. When I hear not only right wingers but liberal talk radio types make this case

(that this is politically better for Romney and the GOP for November) I think it's laughable.

No way they won't try to use it to rally their army of zombies, but they'd have been WAY better off, and Obama WAY worse off, if the ruling had gone the other way, for the reasons stated in this piece.

[PATRICK]

3. Cement overshoes for the wrong candidate

In everything except trying to be an echo chamber for lunacy and hypocrisy Romney is- in substance and on record- the wrong suit. Romneycare. Verbally against what he was a forerunner for. How do you politically repent for being the thing you campaign against when that is the lonely political experience in your popgun?

Might as well be an abortion doctor running on the Right to Life ticket. How can that glare not light up the bane of Bain, joyful job-killer for offshore profit? How can the bumbling anti-charisma of another rich guy energize even the dumbest masses? Sure, get plastered at a convention and anything in an elephant suit looks great, but there is an election day after.

Watching those trapped in this hopeless death spiral of a fundamentally flawed champion(the best of a sordid bunch???), unapologetic hypocrites and power wielders, lick-spittles and media courtiers, donors trying to bend recalcitrant reality to moronic will, flapping bat wings, gnashing teeth, drowning out the disgust and laughter with serious pumping of a swiss cheese campaign balloon- the only entertainment this fall. The fact that there is no real election and no address of real problems beyond the sad American scene will all be protected by a thin slice of Romney ham on stale white bread.

Lest the entire silly, sordid pack of worthless GOP government Reps follow hi justly to oblivion- if not mere accountability- if not some small measure of justice.

[applegrove]

4. +1

[siligut]

5. Some people don't want to think, they want to be told what to think

So, the RW strategy is to always say they are winning. The RW tells the dupes that vote against their own interests that they are winners too, and the idiots take it to heart.