Lights out for obamacare?

  Well, it sure looks like obamacare might be dead. We hold our collective breaths, waiting for the Supreme Court to decide to take the case, while behind the scenes the administration continues to defy the rule of law, in more than one case.
  Here's a post over at Hot Air, which quotes Jonathan Turley (hardly a conservative) as telling the White House to quit whining. Commentary by Captain Ed:

As Turley remarks at the end, the problem with playing chicken is that your opponent might not be one.  Such was the case with Judge Vinson, who acted to preserve the limits of power of the federal government, which is one of the main roles of the federal judiciary.  The severability stunt backfired, and now the White House looks both foolish and extreme, not just for the law but also for their response to the ruling.

  Over at NRO, Avik Roy advises the Republicans to keep their powder dry, not strike yet,  tread carefully.

n other words, if the Supreme Court overturns the individual mandate, but keeps the remainder of PPACA, repealing the remainder of PPACA via the reconciliation process will be scored as adding $400 billion to the deficit, and therefore not pass parliamentary muster, unless the Senate is able to compensate for that $400 billion with offsetting savings, or by successfully modifying the CBO’s assumptions.

The same problem holds true if the 112th Congress were to repeal the mandate without offsetting the $252 billion in savings by repealing some of PPACA’s spending cuts, such as its elimination of support for Medicare Advantage.

The bottom line: Congressional Republicans should think long and hard before they decide what to do next. 

  Hennessey has some ideas on how to repeal obamacare, written before the Senate vote:

Still, this is a solvable problem.  The best policy way to address this would be to leave some (most?) of the Medicare savings in place, and not repeal them.  I’d also favor leaving the “Cadillac tax” on high cost health plans in place.

I think Republicans would be unlikely to choose this path, because it would disrupt their clean policy message and legislative strategy to repeal all of ObamaCare.  If I’m right, they could include in the reconciliation bill other spending cuts that more than offset the CBO-scored deficit increase.  Technically, the Senate Budget Committee Chairman could also overrule CBO scoring, but why give Democrats the rhetorical advantage of a perceived process abuse?  Republicans correctly insist that we need to slow spending growth, and they could here turn a tactical disadvantage into a legislative opportunity to further cut spending. 

  And Karl Rove feels there's much more ahead. He addresses at the WSJ the insult Obama dealt when he referred to "Granny" derisively, as if concern for the elderly were some contemptuously selfish act. That was positively (blinky blinky hold the chin up high and emit the arrogant death ray stare) the most condescending he's said in, oh, 2 days. The WSJ:

Take the question of Granny. In a speech last Friday defending his health-care law's effect on seniors against GOP attacks, Mr. Obama said, "I can report that Granny is safe." She may not feel that way if she's one of the 700,000 seniors whose private Medicare Advantage insurance policy was not renewed last year because her insurance provider quit the business. 

  Man, this sure all looks intentional. Ruining health care, bowing to foreign leaders, not taking any stand ever for democracy, particularly in Arab countries, dissing our friends, and absolutely, positively ruining the job market in this country.
  2013 can't come soon enough.
  And I do mean 13.