Rush Limbaugh Calls Out Mediaite, Clumsily Claims ‘Constitutional Crisis’ Over Healthcare

Rush Limbaugh is not only upset with President Obama for leading this country towards what he deems to be a giant “constitutional crisis” but he’s also annoyed with your friends here at Mediaite. Rush previously claimed Obama would be “lawless” if he did not immediately follow the recent court decision declaring Obamacare to be unconstitutional and now he bizarrely takes us to task for not vociferously agreeing with him?

Rush’s opening shot at Mediaite, in response to an article by Jon Bershad:

“They wrote about [Rush calling Obama’s reaction to the healthcare ruling ‘lawless’] as though I’m some kind of a kook – which is fine. They think the whole idea that the Constitution might be in crisis here is silly.”

Given that Rush claims to operate with “half his brain tied behind his back” in order to make it fair, I’m amazed that he has the power to deduce from Bershad’s completely objective and non-judgmental article that somehow Bershad truly believed Rush’s idea was silly. However, not to disappoint Rush, I will go on the record now and tell him unequivocally, yes, the idea is silly.

A constitutional crisis is a circumstance where the constitution is unable to resolve a problem and where a breakdown in the operation of government results. Think the Civil War, or more recently, the Supreme Court decision of Bush v. Gore, where the Supreme Court could have dismissed the case as a “political question” beyond their jurisdiction to decide, but instead justified deciding the President specifically to avoid a constitutional crisis. In other words, regardless of Rush’s suggestion, “spitting on the Constitution” prior to exhausting the potential remedies available from each branch of government does not in and of itself rise to the same level as a constitutional crisis.

Rush read from a CNBC article for support and dares us, “go ahead and make fun of pointing that out if you wish. Let’s see if the Mediaite people go after this guy.”

However, what Rush glosses over are several key facts, first of which, that there are now two trial court decisions supporting the individual mandate of the healthcare reform bill, in addition to the two opposed to it. Admittedly, U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson goes further to suggest that the whole bill is void absent a severability clause; however, given that Vinson explicitly did not issue an injunction to halt implementation of the bill and given that federal district courts in different states should be entitled to the same level of respect, Obama’s moving forward with implementation, for the time being, cannot be deemed “lawless.” Instead, given that the Supreme Court exists for the very purpose of deciding constitutional questions and settling differing interpretations amongst the lower courts, until the Supreme Court rules, then and only then would Obama’s defiance be deemed a constitutional crisis.

Regardless of this rather long diatribe over what amounts to a dispute over semantics, when Rush’s “the regime is ignoring the court” hyperbole is peeled away, underneath lies a legitimate argument. Does it really make sense to continue to waste time and money with implementation of the healthcare reform bill if its constitutionality is essentially an unpredictable jump ball to be decided by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy?

Check out the clip below from The Rush Limbaugh Show:

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.