I was enjoying your editorial, Common Purpose, until I got to the paragraph that expressed your support of ObamaCare. I could not disagree more.

When the deeply-divided Supreme Court ruled ObamaCare constitutional, it became the biggest tax increase in U.S. history. The new health care program, now dubbed Obama tax, signals the largest expansion of government since the New Deal. This Orwellian bureaucracy will result in worse care, loss of doctor choice, less innovation and increased costs, further hurting citizens already struggling and killing any hope of economic recovery. Cost estimates begin at $2.7 trillion through 2024 and will add more than $823 billion to the deficit. That’s before the $100 billion from the Medicaid program is factored in. Of course, none of the fiscal impacts will be felt until after the election.

Holman Jenkins Jr. wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “The last thing we needed, in a country staggering under deficits and debt, a sluggish economy and an unaffordable entitlement structure, was a new Rube Goldberg entitlement. The last thing we needed was ObamaCare.” As I walked our dog the evening of June 28, I was thinking about what an important day it was. Sunny and beautiful . . . just like Sept. 11, 2001, just like Dec. 7, 1941. Indeed, it was a day of infamy.

There is another major impact if ObamaCare is implemented. It will mean a new government program that, “takes control of your behavior in the way that a parent would of a child, and it diminishes us in terms of our autonomy and our ability to achieve things, even for liberty, on the world stage,” in the words of Dr. Keith Ablow, bestselling author and noted psychiatrist. This cannot end well. He also wrote: “You think Occupy Wall Street looked like a spectacle — imagine tens of millions of adult children of Barack Obama deprived of their direction, of their moneys . . . Guess what — when the piggy bank ain’t there, these are the people who are going to take to the streets with rocks.”

Now comes a CBS report saying that Chief Justice John Roberts was going to vote against ObamaCare but was pressured to change his mind. Who got to him? Powerful Democrats in Congress? Lobbyists? Clearly, he was aware of the mounting pressure brought by liberal media outlets that favored the act and Obama himself spoke emphatically on the matter. Justice Roberts may have worried about the court’s reputation. Well, a new Rasmussen Reports poll found that faith in the court dropped again that week and 56 per cent of Americans feel justices pursue a political agenda. The implications of Justice Roberts’s change of heart are far-reaching and ominous.

The people will finally have their say on Nov. 6. Mitt Romney pledged to the nation hours after the court’s decision, “If we want to get rid of ObamaCare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama.” The country is hungry for a leader it can believe in. Romney has a plan to lead us out of the Obama Depression and bring us together, involve us in the process rather than listen to elite idealogues and Hollywood stars.

Republicans must also recapture the Senate, then vote on ObamaCare, the tax measure. Repeal will come with only 51 votes. That is certainly doable. The Republican base is fired up. The Tea Party will re-engage. Independents and some Democrats will vote against Obama and their representatives who helped ram the wildly unpopular ObamaCare through Congress. We can’t afford another four years of Obama.

Peter Robb
Holliston and Oak Bluffs