Conflating Legal and Political Arguments
In my post yesterday, I criticized Robert Pear’s Sunday NYT article for eliding commerce power arguments into taxing power arguments in his discussion of the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. Igor Volsky quotes me and adds a point about conservatives trying to make hay out of President Obama’s insistence that the mandate is not a tax while invoking the taxing power as a source constitutional authority for the mandate. Volsky isn’t convinced that the charge of inconsistency has merit; nor am I.
But I suspect that, with respect to their short-term political outlook, conservative leaders are playing this rather shrewdly. And while those of us who support healthcare reform may find it extremely vexing, there’s nothing wrong with conservatives glossing over some fine legal distinctions to score political points with their crowd.
My complaint though is with the framing of Pear’s NYT article, which I found misleading (albeit moderately, in the scheme of things). It doesn’t draw a clear distinction between the legal issues, and it doesn’t clearly distinguish legal issues from political ones.
I’ll follow up on some related points when I have more time.
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