Reagan's Solicitor General Resoundingly States Individual Mandate is Constitutional

We've reached a critical point in American politics. For all the affinity Republicans like to throw at President Reagan, the truth is, if he were still around his policies would be way too liberal for today's GOP. Not that Reagan is a liberal or even that much of a moderate. His administration definitely was right of center. But that's how far to the right and how radical the modern GOP has become.

We've all heard Reagan's former budget director time and time again say tax cuts do cause deficits if not offset with spending cuts.  That notion is absolutely rejected out of hand by Republicans today.  Today's Republican Freedom Fighters think tax cuts are the answer to everything.  Yet in addition to cutting some taxes, Reagan raised them 11 different times.  An act totally unthinkable by Republicans today.

Then we have this constant fascination with the national debt by the GOP.  Sure it's only because it's politically expedient for them to want to focus on debts now that they are out of power.  But mention to them that Reagan tripled the national debt and they will insist it was because of patriotic reasons.  Mention Obama has increased it by 15% and they come unglued and rant like crazed monkeys about socialism and government takeovers.

But maybe the biggest topic of the day is Obama's health care reform package he ushered in last year.  Every single elected Republican, along with every single word ever spoken on Fox News, has called the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. Their reasoning is because it carries a mandate that everyone who can afford it has to purchase insurance through private providers or pay a fee/tax to the government. This act alone has caused some of the most heated arguments and moments in America since the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s.  It brought us the Summer of Hate where multitudes of elected Republican members of Congress were organizing protests against the government and frighteningly calling the president an enemy of the state.  Unfortunately it also gave us the Tea Baggers, who are still trying to figure out why everybody can't sit around and protest government services while partaking in government services just like they do.

Yet something interesting happened today in a senate hearing on the Affordable Care Act.  Former Solicitor General, Charles Fried, who was Reagan's SG his entire second term as president, firmly told his Republican colleagues that not only is the ACA constitutional, but the individual mandate is too.

It is unthinkable to hear a Republican say such a thing nowadays.  It would cost them their job, their career and result in being labeled a liberal by the current establishment.  Though it's refreshing to see just how moderate Republicans used to be.  At the same time it highlights just how numbingly stupid and completely controlled they are by Fox News, neoconservatives and the Religious Right.

Again, this is one of Reagan's people disagreeing completely with not just a policy viewpoint of the modern GOP but disagreeing entirely with what is the very foundation of the modern GOP.