June 28, 2012

Conservatives Freak Out Over Health Care Decision

Reactions from the right’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

AVAVA/<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&searchterm=business+people+angry&search_group=&orient=&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&commercial_ok=&color=&show_color_wheel=1#id=48944662&src=cba88d88fc52ca0ed96639ef58eec36c-1-68">Shutterstock.com</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, is constitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts, whom President Barack Obama voted against confirming to the court when he served in the Senate, was the decisive vote upholding Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment. The other conservatives on the court—including Anthony Kennedy, long considered a swing vote—would have struck down the entire law. Here are some of the highlights (and lowlights) of the right’s response to the big ruling:

Bobby Jindal, the GOP governor of Louisiana:

#Sen. #Marco #Rubio (R-Fla.) #loves #hashtags:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the head of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee:

Remember this guy?

What about this guy?

This Breitbart.com guy compares the Obamacare ruling to the Dred Scott decision. No exaggeration!:

Another along the same lines:

This lady launched the whole “Ground Zero mosque” controversy a few years ago (also this):

Joshua Treviño, VP for communications at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation*, initially thought the Obamacare individual mandate had been struck down:

Here’s Matt Drudge, of the Drudge Report:

Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s biggest tea party group:

Supreme Court Rules Against American People

Tea Party Patriots Will Not Rest until Obamacare is Fully Repealed

See our full coverage of the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision.

Washington, DC – Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party organization, today criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling on the President’s healthcare bill.

“The Supreme Court ruled against the American people today,” said Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founder and National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. “The American people overwhelming oppose Obamacare. Now more than ever it is time for the American people to band together and take our government back. Americans agree with what Justice Kennedy said in the dissenting opinion that ‘the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety.’ We are putting all politicians on notice that we will not rest until this law is overturned it’s in entirety.

“This is a slap in the face to the majority of the American people who want Obamacare fully repealed. The Tea Party Patriots stand with the American people and say: fully repeal Obamacare.

“Mr. Romney, Mr. Boehner: the American people are putting you on notice. You both promised to fully repeal Obamacare. We will hold you to your promises.

“We will vote out any politician who does not commit, in writing, to respect the will of the American people and fully repeal Obamacare.”

And from the left:

*Correction: An earlier version of this post misidentified Joshua Treviño and the TPPF. The text has been corrected.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate