He has offered one of the most cogent reflections on the Obamacare decision that I have seen anywhere.
Whether or not Pournelle is absolutely correct is not the point. It is indubitably true that we can no longer rely on the Supreme Court to protect us from poor choices at the polls.* Whether Roberts voted as he did for that purpose or whether Roberts is now a tool of the Establishment is of no consequence. The Court will no longer protect us from the results of our quadrennial follies. And we should never have thought it would do otherwise.
And frankly, anyone who has thought otherwise was a fool. The Constitution says what it says. It is, famously, “not a suicide pact”. When the governed perceive that the government is acting in an extra-Constitutional manner, they need to have the intelligence and the selflessness to go to the polls and throw the bums out — even if they are their own bums. To reason (as many have obviously done over the years) that it is more important to keep your incumbent representative or senator in office because he has seniority, and that protecting him will be better for you and your state, is a logical non sequitur. The more seniority a Congresscritter has, history has clearly shown it to be the more urgent to remove him from office at the first opportunity. The founding fathers agreed, and tailored their own political careers to suit.
In Indiana, we’ve finally ended the career of a Senator who should have been thrown to the wolves at least twelve and possibly sixteen years ago. A Republican senator. Republicans in this state finally stood up on their hind legs and said, “Enough!” — even though they then opened up the possibility of a Democrat winning the seat in November. Enough of them saw through the incumbency bullshit to clear the decks for somebody new, regardless of who it turns out to be.**
In a like manner, it is now incumbent on us to end the incumbency of the sitting President, and any other incumbent who has succumbed to the Establishment Kool-Aid.
For those who think that November does not matter, well, maybe it doesn’t. But it can at least be a start. Nobody said mucking out the Augean Washington stables was going to be easy.
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* It is questionable, of course, whether we should ever have done.
** Not that I hold any brief for Joe “The Vote That Passed Obamacare” Donnelly. I’ve met and heard Richard Mourdock and I think he is a fine man. He could stand to do something about his idiot staff, though.