Most Americans Think ObamaCare Unconstitutional, But Many of Them Would Retain It

The assessments of the American People of the constitutionality of ObamaCare, or the lie called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, are very revealing of attitudes about the importance to them of constitutional principles.  The poll numbers used below are taken from a Gallup poll of 1,040 Americans taken on 20 and 21 February 2012. 

72% of Americans believe the individual mandate requiring that everyone purchase a government-approved health insurance plan or pay a penalty or go to jail for up to 5 years is unconstitutional.  It is widely recognized by all, including Democrats, that ObamaCare cannot sustain itself without an individual mandate to purchase health insurance.

Yet despite the widespread agreement that the critical foundational requirement of ObamaCare is unconstitutional, only 47% of Americans believe it should be repealed and only 26% strongly believe it should be repealed.  This implies that 25% of Americans who know the law is unconstitutional in a critical provision want to have their healthcare dictated by a law they understand to be unconstitutional!

This means that more than half the Americans needed to produce the plurality commonly needed to elect our government officials are people who willingly and knowingly choose to violate the Constitution.  Couple these knowing violators of the American Principle of Limited Government and Protected Individual Rights with those hordes happily ignorant of the purpose of government and the hordes who are happy dependents of government, and America's future is exceedingly grim.  It seems the path to tyranny is not only as always the downhill path, but not more than 47% of Americans have any willingness to defend the Constitution and any proclivity at all to climb the hill to freedom.  Note that the 47% of Americans willing to defend the Constitution is an upper limit.  Only 24% believe that ObamaCare will improve their health care, so some fraction of the 47% who want repeal no doubt want it only because they believe ObamaCare will be harmful to them or others, rather than out of a commitment to defend the American Principle.

Let us examine the upper limits at which Republicans will defend the Constitution and that of Democrats in comparison.  94% of Republicans understand ObamaCare to be unconstitutional and 87% favor its repeal.  7% of Republicans who know it to be unconstitutional will not defend the Constitution, but at least 94% do understand that it is unconstitutional.  The case for Democrats is that only 56% understand that ObamaCare is unconstitutional, but 77% oppose repeal.  Only 14% of Democrats favor the repeal of ObamaCare, implying that at least 42% of the Democrats who understand ObamaCare to be unconstitutional want it retained in violation of the Constitution.

So, 7% of Republicans both understand ObamaCare to be unconstitutional and do not want it repealed.  42% of Democrats both recognize it to be unconstitutional and do not want it repealed.  There are six times as many Democrats who are not deterred by a violation of the Constitution.  It is also clear that the brutal act of levying expensive fines and putting dissenters in jail for 5 years does not trouble their consciences.