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Go Butch Crazy!

I love how fringe conservatives have suddenly become constitutional scholars on health care, while they were silent on the war on terror. (And for the record, the fringe liberals are no worse; they'll cheerfully rake John Yoo over the coals while politely declining to notice that the President Obama has reserved the vast majority of President Bush's most constitutionally questionable polices.)

Both sides (the liberals with Yoo and the conservatives with health care) are making the same ridiculous mistake -- both sides assume that the way to resolve a controversial policy dispute is to constitutionalize the problem. In Idaho, the constitutionalization of the healthcare issue has gotten out of hand.

Enter Exhibit A.

Idaho's Governor Butch Otter (yes, that's really his name) was among the first to grab a pitchfork over the healthcare bill -- in fact, he ordered the Idaho AG to bring a constitutional challenge to the bill before it even passed.

That's fine. I don't think the suit has much merit, but I also doubt Butch's view is so outrageous as to warrant sanction. The courts can work it out, while the Governor beats on his talking points, conservative academics steal some attention, and academics from the other side try to steal it back. That adds up to a pretty normal day in America.

Enter Exhibit B.

It's Otter's next move that puzzles me. His next move has been to spearhead a campaign to pass a 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution, forbidding government-backed healthcare:

The Congress shall make no law requiring citizens of the United States to enroll in, participate in or secure health care insurance or to penalize any citizens who declines to purchase or participate in any health care insurance program.

So, which is it? Is he suing because the bill violates the Constitution? Or, is he proposing an amendment because the bill is valid?

I understand that constitutional rhetoric has political value, but I wish people would think these things through enough to at least assert the same points in the same breath. The healthcare bill is constitutional, or else it is not. I don't think a person can have it both ways . . . even if that person's name does call to mind a sexual ambiguous aquatic mammal.

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on March 31, 2010 (boomark / email).