Conservatives are preparing an all-out offensive against President Obama's healthcare law in response to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are pledging to work hard to repeal the law, and American Crossroads, a powerful conservative political action committee, has also declared war on the law.
The high court ruling "is a millstone around the neck of any Democrat running for federal office in 2012," says Jonathan Collegio, communications director for American Crossroads, which was co-founded by top Republican strategist Karl Rove.
"The Supreme Court's decision forces Obamacare to be litigated in the 2012 election, and in virtually every case where Obamacare has been litigated by voters in an election, the law and its supporters lose," Collegio says, citing "Scott Brown's wildly improbable victory in the 2010 Massachusetts special election" for the Senate and the 2010 mid-terms elections when Republicans made big gains partly by running against Obama's healthcare law.
"Obamacare is now a real, concrete, tax-hiking and regulatory-expanding law that will or will not be repealed in January 2013—depending on the outcome of the 2012 election. Politicians who were safely able to passively support Obamacare in the past will now have to actively defend their position against a repeal effort—with an election between now and then," Collegio says.
Ken Walsh covers the White House and politics for U.S. News. He writes a daily blog, "Ken Walsh's Washington," and is the author of "The Presidency" column for the U.S. News Weekly. He can be reached at kwalsh@usnews.com and on Facebook and Twitter.
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