With the Supreme Court about to decide the fate of ObamaCare, Americans are destined to hear all kinds of accusations about the so-called partisan nature of the conservatives on the bench.
New York magazine's John Heilemann did his part on this weekend's Chris Matthews Show claiming the Court's ruling in 2000's Bush v. Gore case "was pure politics and purely corrupt" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Kelly, is it your view, the same view that it would be viewed as a partisan ruling if they rule against it?
KELLY EVANS, CNBC: It's hard to see how the media rhetoric would be played out any other way, and certainly the Obama administration would try to play it that way and claim that it was a political rather than a legally based decision.
GLORIA BORGER, CNN: And that's a problem for the Court because you did have Bush v. Gore. This is, you know, health care reform is a political issue.
MATTHEWS: I wonder if they’re thinking like this, John, that they better not look partisan.
JOHN HEILEMANN, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: It's not comparable to Bush v. Gore. It’s not. A stolen election, which is what still many people think about that, is not the same as striking down this. This is, there is a Constitutional, a legitimate, very conservative Constitutional argument in play here. On Bush v Gore it was like, it was pure politics and purely corrupt.
Does Heilemann really believe there was no Constitutional argument in play with Bush v. Gore?
Let's remember on a 7-2 vote, the Court decided the Equal Protection Clause in the fourteenth amendment was being violated by the differences in how votes were being counted from one Florida county to the other.
Does Heilemann think Justices Breyer, Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, Souter and Thomas made this decision purely for political reasons without any knowledge of the fourteenth amendment?
Of course, if that case had been ruled in Gore's favor, Heilemann and his ilk would have considered it a scholarly decision completely lacking in partisanship.
The same is going to be true of the pending ObamaCare ruling.
If the Court upholds the law, the media will celebrate the wisdom of the bench as well as our entire judicial system.
But if any part of ObamaCare is struck down, the press will consider it "pure politics and purely corrupt."
Funny how that works.
