On his Thursday radio show, conservative talker Mark Levin, author of “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” echoed a plea he made on his Facebook page earlier, attacking conservative syndicated columnist George Will for calling the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling “a substantial victory.” Levin called the article “the dumbest George Will article, certainly among them, that I have ever read”
Perhaps it’s more of a long-term view of the situation, but Will saw an upside in the announcement of a 5-4 decision declaring President Barack Obama’s 2010 landmark health care legislation constitutional.
In an article on the Post’s website, Will explained that conservatives got a victory with the decision, which he said has put the brakes on government expansion.
“Conservatives won a substantial victory Thursday,” Will wrote. “The physics of American politics — actions provoking reactions — continues to move the crucial debate, about the nature of the American regime, toward conservatism. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has served this cause. The health-care legislation’s expansion of the federal government’s purview has improved our civic health by rekindling interest in what this expansion threatens — the framers’ design for limited government.”
Will’s reasoning relies on the portion of Roberts’ opinion that has put boundaries around what the Commerce Clause allows the government to do.
“You see folks,” Levin said, “conservatives are so used to losing — particularly conservatives inside the beltway that have been here for decades — then when we really, really lose, they claim that we’ve won. I don’t know if this is a psychological thing — I don’t know.”
Will said that this decision would reinvigorate small government conservatives, a premise Levin scoffed at.
“Well gee, they might as well start rounding us up because that will rekindle the effort that the framers started, too,” Levin declared. “This is so asinine that I’m stunned. This is as stunning to me as the John Roberts opinion.”
Levin particularly disagreed with Will’s suggestion that Roberts got the court to go along with downplaying the Commerce Clause as a means, since there were four other justices that had done the same.
“There’s no lesson here that’s useful,” he said. “In fact, the lesson is who the hell do you trust anymore. … I don’t know what our friend George Will is drinking, but this is so absurd.”
For Levin, all of this was unnecessary — despite Will’s reasoning — because the American public already has a litany of reasons to push back against the government, specifically Congress.
“Gee folks, doesn’t every survey and poll show that most of us hate Congress?” Levin said. “What are they, about 9 percent popularity level? But even more than that, haven’t we been squinting at them for a long time, over stuff like Obamacare and the failure to secure the border and balance the budget and control spending? I mean gee, did we really need John Roberts to concoct a tax argument to save Obamacare to figure out that we have a problem with Congress, George Will? I’m not even reading any more of this. It’s the dumbest George Will article, certainly among them, that I have ever read.”