Supreme Court Shocks Life Into Obamacare Challenge

The emperor wears no clothes. The bloom is off the rose. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Pardon the barrage of stale metaphors, but it’s difficult to put into words the utter pasting Mitt Romney put on Barack Obama last week.

Pat Buchanan called Romney’s “the finest debate performance” in 52 years “with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan’s demolition of Jimmy Carter in 1980.”

Indeed, when all of CNN and MSNBC–to include Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow–hysterically admit that President Obama got smoked; he got smoked. Bad.

Liberal blogger and Obama sycophant Andrew Sullivan captured the universally shared “progressive” panic as the brutal mismatch came to a close: “How is Obama’s closing statement so … sad, confused and lame? He choked. He lost. He may even have lost the election tonight.”

For those of us who have long recognized the messianic myth that is Barack Hussein Obama, the debate was especially gratifying.

The world had fallen prey to a cartoonish hoax. This media-crafted Iron Man has proven a mere mortal, a tin man, an international embarrassment.

The jig is up.

In just 90 minutes, Mitt Romney stripped away the Iron Man costume and exposed, naked beneath, a man more closely resembling Robert Downey Jr.

Recall the image, so often seen, of a young Robert, head downcast in shame, standing before the judge to rationalize why, yet again, he’d screwed up magnificently. Last Wednesday was Barack’s turn.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Robert Downey Jr. I’m glad he turned his life around. But he’s an actor. He reads his lines. He’s not Iron Man. And he’s not qualified to be president.

Neither is Barack Obama.

And so, lost with no teleprompter binky, and, thus, suffering a debate trouncing unparalleled in history, it would seem that the president’s not so good, very bad week couldn’t get worse.

It got worse.

Just two days prior, the U.S. Supreme Court revived hope–long thought dead–that Obamacare, the president’s signature achievement, might yet be ruled unconstitutional. The High Court shocked the legal community by opening its new term with an order giving the Obama Justice Department just 30 days to respond to Liberty Counsel’s petition for rehearing. Liberty Counsel filed the petition on behalf of Liberty University and two private individuals.

An appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled that the Anti-Injunction Act, or AIA, barred the court from addressing the merits in Liberty Univ., Inc. v. Geithner, which challenged the individual mandate (Section 1501) and the employer insurance mandate (Section 1513) of Obamacare.

In addition to the constitutional arguments that Congress lacked authority to pass the law, the suit also raised the Free Exercise of religion claim because of the forced taxpayer funding of abortion.

You may recall that the first day of oral argument was dedicated to the AIA, the issue that Liberty University’s case placed before the High Court. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the AIA does not apply to Obamacare. Therefore, Liberty Counsel asked the Court to grant the petition (because Liberty University prevailed on the AIA claim), vacate the Court of Appeals ruling and remand (send back) the case to the Court of Appeals to consider the Free Exercise claim and the employer mandate, neither of which were decided by the High Court.

Long story short: If the Supreme Court ultimately hears the case on appeal–which is highly possible as the claims are unique–and rules that the employer mandate and Free Exercise claims are legit, Obamacare dies on the vine. It’s effectively overturned. It’s like a shiny new Chevy Volt without the exploding battery. It goes nowhere fast and is towed to the junkyard of really, really stupid ideas.

This means, among other things, that people who value human life won’t be made complicit in abortion homicide on the taxpayer dime.

“Obamacare is the biggest funding of abortion in American history,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law. “Under the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, Obamacare will, for the first time, require employers and individuals to directly fund abortion.

“This abortion mandate collides with religious freedom and the rights of conscience. I am very pleased with the Court’s decision today,” concluded Staver.

During the debate, Mitt Romney took Obama to task over Obamacare: “I just don’t know how the president could have come into office, facing 23 million people out of work, rising unemployment, an economic crisis at the–at the kitchen table and spent his energy and passion for two years fighting for Obamacare instead of fighting for jobs for the American people. It has killed jobs.”

Obama was left stuttering and stammering–sheepishly defending his grossly unaffordable, wholly unsustainable and wildly unpopular Obamacare monstrosity.

I was left encouraged.

Whether by legislative repeal, or through Liberty Counsel’s ongoing case, freedom-loving America should be confident. This freakish Frankenstein monster will, God willing, be soon laid to rest beneath the cold, clammy earth from which Democrats dug it up.

Obama’s shovel-ready debate performance was the groundbreaking.

Matt Barber (@jmattbarber on Twitter) is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.