{"id":16154,"date":"2012-03-27T17:13:38","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T17:13:38","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-03-27T17:13:38","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T17:13:38","slug":"left_shocked_by_court_developments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/admin.rushlimbaugh.com\/daily\/2012\/03\/27\/left_shocked_by_court_developments\/","title":{"rendered":"Left Shocked by Court Developments"},"content":{"rendered":"

RUSH: Grab sound bite 2 before we get to sound bites 23 and 24. This is last night. We\u2019ll do a little timeline here involving Jeff Toobin. Last night on Chalie Rose, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin — who, by the way, for those of you old enough to remember, is the son of former network TV news reporter Marlene Sanders. He wrote a big book after the O.J. trial, and he\u2019s been at CNN for quite a while. And Charlie Rose said, Jeffrey Toobin, “How big a deal is this Obamacare<\/a> case at the Supreme Court?”<\/p>\n

TOOBIN: Epic! Awesome! Enormous! Huge!<\/p>\n

ROSE: (guffawing)<\/p>\n

TOOBIN: This is the biggest case involving the power of the federal government since the New Deal. And if this law is struck down, the federal government is gonna look very different the next day. And lots of plans and lots existing programs are in jeopardy. So, I mean, as big as you think this case is, it\u2019s actually bigger.<\/line><\/p>\n

RUSH: Last night, Jeffrey Toobin accurately describes the size and scope of Obamacare.<\/a> Today, it\u2019s Politico “breaking news,” but we\u2019ve got sound bites from CNN. Toobin, quote: “This law looks like it\u2019s going to be struck down. I\u2019m telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong… [I]f I had to bet today, Wolf, I would bet that this court is going to strike down the individual mandate.” Tom Goldstein, attorney and cofounder, center-left SCOTUS <\/a>blog: “The individual mandate is in trouble, significant trouble.” Los Angeles Times\u2019 Noam Levey: “Tuesday\u2019s arguments may signal trouble for the mandate, widely seen as a cornerstone of the law\u2019s program for achieving universal health care coverage for the first time in the nation\u2019s history.”<\/p>\n

Politico breaking news: “The conservative justices and potential swing vote Anthony Kennedy raised concerns Tuesday that forcing Americans to buy health insurance would open the door to other intrusive requirements from the federal government…” What was so hard to predict about this? This goes right to my point. What\u2019s so hard to predict that this thing is unconstitutional? It is unconstitutional. And a Civics 101 student in junior high, after having the Constitution explained to them, would know this. And here come these legal experts: “There\u2019s no way that justices are gonna strike this down! There ain\u2019t no way.” And then after one day of oral arguments, these same experts (probably just as qualified as the economic experts at the Associated Press) say: My God, these justices, they don\u2019t like the individual mandate! We\u2019re in big trouble. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Jeff Toobin. He\u2019s on CNN this afternoon. The coanchor, Ashleigh Banfield, said, “Tell me everything, Jeff. What happened today?”<\/p>\n

TOOBIN: This was a train wreck for the Obama administration. This law looks like it\u2019s gonna be struck down. Justice Kennedy, the swing vote, was enormously skeptical. Every comment Kennedy made — uh, at least that I heard — was skeptical of the law. The wild card in this argument was, uh, Chief Justice Roberts. Chief Justice Roberts actually asked a lot of hard questions. Roberts seemed like a much more likely vote to uphold the law than Kennedy was.<\/p>\n

RUSH: See, he had to find something positive after saying today, “was a train wreck for the Obama administration.” And again he said, “I\u2019m telling you, all of the predictions, including mine, that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong… this court is going to strike down the individual mandate.” Wolf Blitzer then weighed in…<\/p>\n

BLITZER: This is really huge! Uh, uh, uh, what you\u2019re saying — and you\u2019re an authority on the US Supreme Court — you\u2019ve written the major book on the current Supreme Court — uh, The Nine. So you fully understand. But just because a justice is asking tough questions, let\u2019s say of the government lawyer — Mr. Verrilli in this case — that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that that justice is gonna come down on the other side. Isn\u2019t that right?<\/p>\n

TOOBIN: It\u2019s true, but it\u2019s not very true, Wolf. Yes, it is true that sometimes we\u2019re surprised by the justices\u2019 votes after hearing their comments at oral argument. Most of the time — and it\u2019s not all the time, but most of the time — the questions that the justices ask at oral argument are very good predictors of how they\u2019re gonna vote.<\/p>\n

RUSH: So the left is in panic! Wolf Blitzer is in panic, looking for a life preserver from Jeff Toobin, who didn\u2019t give him one. And they\u2019re shocked! This is what\u2019s funny. They are shocked. We aren\u2019t. Well, we might be because we\u2019re surprised that the Constitution is actually being adhered to here, or appears to be. <\/p>\n

BREAK TRANSCRIPT<\/p>\n

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to temper your expectations on this. This is just oral argument, and we\u2019re nowhere near the vote on this thing and we really don\u2019t know how this is gonna go. All we have right now is palpable fear on the left. … This fascinates me, all of this shock and surprise on the left. The media, court watchers, leftist legal beagles. They are in a state of shock, a legitimate state of shock, folks. They really believed this was gonna sail through. And we have to always keep in mind how relatively young most of these people are, and thus how they\u2019ve been educated. They didn\u2019t get Constitution 101, like I did. They have been taught that the Constitution\u2019s a flawed document that needs to be changed whenever it can be. <\/line>