HURT: The silver lining? Now Obama owns his tax hikes

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Conservatives gathering now for a low-tech lynching of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. need to take a quick breath of air and think about what he managed to accomplish by upholding President Obama's highly unpopular, signature piece of legislation.

Though he shocked many by joining the left plank on the high court, Justice Roberts. pretty much did what he was supposed to do. He finally put a boundary on how much freedom the federal government can gobble up from states and individuals under the "commerce clause" — that most specious scheme for so much federal thievery.

Then he told President Obama and his kleptocrats in Congress that they can have their health care law, but they cannot keep lying about it. A tax is a tax and they are liars if they call it anything else. And they just stuck the crippled American taxpayer with one of the biggest, broadest, most regressive tax-hikes in history — and during a deep recession!

Finally, Justice Roberts turned to the bumbling, tongue-twisted and goofball opposition party — sometimes called the "Republican" party but usually called the "stupid" or "slow" party — and told them to man up, quit whining and fix the horrific mess that they are so much responsible for. They may have messed their diaper, but he's not changing it for them.

OK, fine, maybe Republicans didn't vote for Obamacare. Woo-hoo! And that got us, well, Obamacare anyway.

Yes, Republicans are nearly equally responsible for Obamacare because they set the stage perfectly for Mr. Obama's unquestioned ascent to the White House and handed his kleptocrats complete control of Congress for the first two years of the Great Taxus Interegnum.

So badly had they mishandled the economy and everything else and so badly had they compromised and corrupted themselves that even Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid became viable options for leadership.

It was under the dazed gaze of San Fran Pelosi and the fat-fisted leadership of Vegas Reid that we got stuck with Obamacare.

In response to an ocean of debt, out-of-control spending and taxpayers running out of money, Mrs. Pelosi, Mr. Reid and Mr. Obama decided to double down on the debt, spend even more money we don't have and take away what little money taxpayers had left.

And in response to the highest unemployment in decades, they decided to take even more money away from the companies that provide jobs. And then they yoked those companies with Obamacare.

Somehow, Republicans were not able to make a coherent argument against all of this. They could not make the simple argument that if you don't like your postal service, you aren't going to like health care brought to you by the federal government either.

Now, going into the election, President Obama has his law and now he must live with it. He must own it. And he must be judged for the massive taxes his law will levy on innocent Americans.

And then it will be up to Mitt Romney and a new set of Republicans to clean up this legislative cesspool.

Because, as Justice Roberts eloquently writes:

"Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our nation´s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."

• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com.