A House Divided
When President Obama was inaugurated, he took the same route to Washington that Lincoln did, he used the Lincoln Bible, and even openly talked about studying Lincoln's Inaugural Address while preparing his. The Inaugural lunch featured foods that President Lincoln enjoyed. Going back a little further, President Obama even went to Springfield Illinois to announce his candidacy in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln. While I alone saw the irony in following the path to Washington of a President one would never wish to follow on the path out, many people took comfort in the efforts gone to by the new President. The Presidential Inauguration Committee had the following to say about it.
Facing a nation divided, teetering toward civil war, President Lincoln used his first inaugural address to call for national unity, arguing that our Constitution was created “to form a more perfect Union.“ Now, 147 years later, President-elect Barack Obama is echoing President Lincoln’s call in words and in symbolism. He will be placing his hand upon the same burgundy velvet-bound Bible that was used by President Lincoln at his first inauguration as he is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.
Now, the parallels between Obama and Lincoln seem to run a bit deeper. President Lincoln took over a Country that was divided with promises of unity, only to ultimately, for better or worse, drive the wedges deeper. He ultimately lead the United States to war against it's own brethren. In a much more civilized affair, the depth of the wedge driven between our fellow countrymen evidenced itself on Tuesday as a new milestone was reached in the lawsuit against Obama's Health Care Reform Act.
The political sea change marked by the November elections on Tuesday pulled six more states into Florida's lawsuit challenging the national healthcare legislation -- making it one of the biggest tests of federal authority in the country's history, with 26 states now in line.
On the same day the U.S. House of Representatives began debating repeal of the law, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a motion in Pensacola federal court adding Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Maine to the list of plaintiffs.
No matter which side of the issue one takes, it is a bit stunning to see the deep divide in this country. And while President Obama mocked the Republicans for their overblown cries of Armageddon when the bill was passed, the Democrats were not to be outdone yesterday when Steve Cohen compared the repeal to the Holocaust.
"They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing."
At some point, common sense will take over in the debate and whatever will be will be. It is unlikely that the repeal will have much, if any effect. The lawsuit, on the other hand, might be a bit more likely to succeed. A similar lawsuit filed in Virginia was already successful at the state level, and will begin it's path through the appellate courts, with both sides publicly stating their determination to see it through to the Supreme Court. Yet the Justice Department surprised some when it declared it's opposition to having the case fast tracked to the highest court.
Many have speculated that the opposition comes from a desire to delay the process long enough to implement many of the provisions of the law in hopes that they will stay, even if the law is found unconstitutional. I have a bit of a different theory on this myself. Justice Sotomayor has had to recuse herself from cases she had worked on prior to her appointment to the high court. Will this be one of those cases? If so, the likely outcome would be a 4-4 tie in the court. A tie in the Supreme Court by default upholds the findings of the lower court. In this case, a fast track resulting in a tie would find the law to be Unconstitutional. I believe that it is a real possibility that President Obama wants this case to play out in hopes of another judge finding in favor of it, at which point a fast track would be supported by the Administration.
Either way, it is possible that President Obama's shot at the Supreme Court could come back to haunt him. Going back to the State Of The Union Address, I pointed out on my show at the time the political immaturity of a public verbal flogging to a court that you might later need to have on your side. At the time, I didn't know that the stakes would be this high.
The significance of over half of these united states involved in the lawsuit against the federal government cannot be overlooked. No matter where one stands on the issue, the group opposed to the law can no longer be considered a fringe group. In a fight that seems to have fallen on strictly partisan lines, the addition of traditionally solid blue states like Wisconsin and Maine cannot be overlooked. It seems that the effort to kill this law is much more bipartisan than the effort to pass it ever was.