Romney Hits Roberts for ‘Not Accurate’ Health Care Ruling
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Win McNamee/Getty Images(NEW YORK) — In a TV interview, Mitt Romney stressed his disagreement with the Supreme Court’s ruling to uphold President Obama’s health care law, even criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts for reaching “a conclusion I think that was not accurate and not an appropriate conclusion.”
Romney has said in the past and his website states he would “nominate justices in the mold of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito” who “exhibit a genuine appreciation for the text, structure, and history of our Constitution and interpret the Constitution and the laws as they are written.”
In an interview with CBS that aired Thursday, he was asked if he would still nominate Roberts.
“I certainly wouldn’t nominate someone who– I knew– was gonna come out with a decision I violently disagreed with or vehemently, rather, disagreed with,” Romney told CBS’ Jan Crawford. “But that being said, he’s a very bright person and I’d look for individuals that have intelligence and believe in following the Constitution.”
Romney continued: “I also indicate that Alito, Thomas, and Scalia are the kinds of justices I would look to appoint. I’m not gonna agree with all of their decisions. But I think in this case that Justice Roberts took a departure from the kind of reasoning which I think would have been sound, which would have been to declare the Obamacare bill unconstitutional.”
Crawford reported last week that Roberts actually switched his vote first aligning himself with the conservative justices before moving over to the liberal side to uphold the individual mandate. Romney said the change “gives the impression that the decision was made not based upon constitutional foundation, but instead political consideration about the relationship between the branches of government.”
“But we won’t really know the answers to those things until the justice himself speaks out– maybe sometime in history,” Romney said in the interview during his weeklong family vacation in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
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