Roberts' ruling brings a sea change: Mitt Romney joins the Tea Party

(copyright by Bernie Quigley, 2012)

The Obamacare ruling by the Supremes this week dramatically changes the political landscape. Such change can be seen as a compromise when compromise would not work to hold back time. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 has been called the "great compromise" which forced slavery on the north and offended states rights and the Tenth Amendment, brings a good comparison in that a similar cultural shift occurred then, to what is happening now in America. The effect was to further infuriate the North and drive them closer to warfare and the great tragedies which lay ahead. As one major commentator claimed today, “John Robert’s Compromise of 2012” is “historic because it is a Compromise — a crisis-averting pact across lines of ideology, party and region, the likes of which we have not seen since pre-Civil War days.” It is indeed and Roberts is now infuriated the right and the 30 states which brought opposition to this federal mandate.

Said to friend at the Tenth Amendment Center that we on the ground since 2003 on behalf of states’ rights have now managed to radicalize three important and committed adults; Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Bob McDonnell. This is the way of all historic transition in its classic anthropological passage: It took John Brown to empower Lincoln, and the half mad lawyer James Otis to empower John Adams. So that, remarkably, which began with a few New Hampshire renegades called the "free staters" ten years ago can now actually count Mitt Romney in their ranks. And Rick Perry, who always had the tendency, and Bob McDonnell.

This, represented today by John Roberts, the archetypal Eastern Establishment Conservative and a George H.W. Bush appointee, brings a full change of paradigm to conservatism. Until today there were three sensibilities in government; the Roosevelt Democrats and the Bush conservatives, and the rising Tea Party coalition which brought a challenge to Obamacare. John Roberts’s decision classically links Bush conservatives to Roosevelt/Kennedy/Obama liberals and this is the essence of his “compromise.” In this event Bush conservatives lose to history and rural conservatives rise to the center of political culture.

Mitt Romney has in the last few years gone through a natural radicalization. In effect, he has joined the party of Sarah Palin, Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano and is now the leader of that movement. And the coalition and Tea Party influence now takes dominance over the easterners in the Republican Party. Those conservatives who hope for an Obama victory in 2012 so they can run back the clock with Christie/Jeb Bush in 2016 have been accommodated by Roberts’ “compromise.” But Robert is rapidly becoming a pariah to conservatives and their hopes are now diminished.