Byron York: Conservative anger growing over Obamacare decision

◼ I ran into a prominent conservative member of Congress Friday night just before the huge storms moved through Washington. - Byron York/Washington Examiner

He was, he said, far angrier on the day after the Supreme Court Obamacare decision than he had been the moment he learned Chief Justice John Roberts had joined the Court’s liberal bloc to uphold the individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare. He didn’t resort to histrionics or profanity, but he was spitting mad — and his anger was growing, not diminishing.

A short time later, I saw another conservative lawmaker who said much the same thing. And yet another conservative leader who was in the same frame of mind.

At the same time, a backlash was forming in response to analyses by some formidable conservative writers — George Will, Charles Krauthammer, and others — who argued the Obamacare decision was actually a victory for conservatives because it placed a limit on expansive interpretations of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. In the Wall Street Journal, Berkeley law professor and former Bush Justice Department official John Yoo called such silver-lining analyses “hollow hope” and wrote that Obamacare is precisely the disaster for conservatives it appears to be...

◼ John Yoo: Chief Justice Roberts and His Apologists - Wall St. Journal

◼ Why Roberts did it - Charles Krauthammer/Washington Post

...Obamacare is now essentially upheld. There’s only one way it can be overturned. The same way it was passed — elect a new president and a new Congress. That’s undoubtedly what Roberts is telling the nation: Your job, not mine. I won’t make it easy for you.