One of the crazy things about Romney is that there’s really so little to say about him. It looks as though we’re stuck with the guy for at least another seven-eight months. Geez. This blogger, absent the revelation that Mitt Romney wasn’t born in America or even on this planet!, anticipates at least half a year of unrelieved Free Cell games. Are the rest of you opinionated people out there also bored?
Maybe Frank Rich for whom Mitt Romney is “a candidate who is both pure wood and bereft of a message.”
Romney somehow thinks he’s survived the attacks on his Bain career when in reality they have only just begun and he’s never figured out how to counter them. …
…Romney may be almost too ripe for parody. Won’t the gags and Web parodies get old? Never. Letterman landed a new dog joke just this week. (“It was such a beautiful day today, Mitt Romney was riding on the roof of his car.”) Comedy is the only business we can be certain that a Romney presidency would grow. … New York
___
Matt Yglesias asks whether we’re finally going to get smart. The answer is (more or less) “only when we die.”
“Truth never triumphs—its opponents just die out,” said Max Planck, “science advances one funeral at a time.”
That’s one of those quotes where I’m not sure the famous guy to whom it’s attributed ever actually said it. But it correctly captures the contours of change. Ideas that are at the margins in one cohort may become mainstream in the next because they seem more appealing or fruitful or relevant. But already established figures very rarely change their views about anything that’s important to them. Instead they apply their intelligence to rationalizing their own desire to not switch views. And since we’re normally not interested in the opinions of stupid people, we find that smart people are very good at applying reason to the task of rationalization. …Moneybox
The irony is that you and I may have been right once but we’re also about to be proven wrong. It’s just a matter of time. As Yglesias points out, Paul Krugman is one of those who believes “if the intellectual climate changes for the better it will be because it changes what subjects and methods young people think are interesting.”
___
Let’s not overestimate the wisdom of the Supreme Court. No matter how they work through the mandate circus, they have lost a great deal of respect. And not just nationally. But nationally they have the popular backing for striking down the health care law even if they don’t have the law on their side.
Dahlia Lithwick walks us through the tangle. She is yet another legal scholar who doesn’t believe the Court has any justification in hell for striking down the Affordable Care Act on the basis of the mandate. But that won’t stop them from doing just that if they want to do it. That’s because this is about “optics, politics, and public opinion” even though it’s not supposed to be. And Lithwick is correct in criticizing the Obama: the administration could have and should have defended the law more effectively in the “court of public opinion.”
But in the end, Lithwick believes, the justices may give the ACA a pass because they have other fish to fry.
They will hear six hours of argument next week. They will pretend it is a fair fight with equally compelling arguments on each side. They will even reach out and debate the merits of the Medicaid expansion, although not a single court saw fit to question it. And then the justices will vote 6-3 or 7-2 to uphold the mandate, with the chief justice joining the majority so he can write a careful opinion that cabins the authority of the Congress to do anything more than regulate the health-insurance market. No mandatory gym memberships or forced broccoli consumption. And then—having been hailed as the John Marshall of the 21st century—he will proceed to oversee two years during which the remainder of the Warren Court revolution will be sent through the wood chipper.
Looked at on the merits, the Affordable Care Act isn’t the “case of the century.” It probably isn’t even the “Case of 2012.” Next week we will all be glued to the political spectacle. But stay tuned. The real action in Roberts’ court has yet to come. …Slate
The remainder of democracy through the wood chipper? Yeah, sure. Another agenda? Why not! Roberts is still in his 5o’s, though subject to “benign idiopathic seizures.” Alito? Not much older and has had no known brushes with the grim reaper.