Mainstream Republicans have relied on stealth messages and lightly veiled bigotry for years. Reagan was a master of the art.

Rand's particular statement on Civil Rights was just Rand being Rand, and though in line with core GOP beliefs, there two reasons why the GOP cannot abide Rand's gaffe.  First, the statement is not particularly helpful to the GOP's ongoing effort to identify and press GOP voter enhancing wedge issues.  Second, the position does not do anything to solidify or enhance the wealth of the wealthiest among us.  Form the GOP's view, it was and is pointless.

Some excerpts:

In a column last year, I argued that an individual mandate to purchase health insurance-which was then under consideration, and now has been enacted-should survive a constitutional challenge because it falls within either Congress's power to tax or its power to regulate interstate commerce. The Comstock decision further confirms that the Court would find the individual mandate valid under the Commerce power. To see why, it is worth comparing and contrasting Comstock with two other Commerce Clause decisions: the 1995 decision in United States v. Lopez and the 2005 decision in Gonzales v. Raich.

[snip]

Applying that principle [discussed in the article's preceding paragraphs] to the individual mandate to purchase health insurance is straightforward. The federal law forbids health insurers from refusing or dropping coverage based on pre-existing conditions. That prohibition is undoubtedly a regulation of "economic activity" as required by Lopez. But the prohibition by itself would create an incentive for uninsured healthy people to game the system: They could take their chances without health insurance unless and until they got sick; at that point, they could buy health insurance without fear of being turned down for a pre-existing condition; and as a result, the system would not function, because a pool composed exclusively of sick people would not produce sufficient premiums to cover the cost of their medical treatment. Thus, Congress had a reasonable basis for including the individual mandate in the health care legislation as a means of effectuating the prohibition on refusing or dropping coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Notwithstanding the foregoing analysis, it is possible that five Justices could vote to invalidate the individual mandate to purchase health insurance. In my view, doing so would be very difficult to square with the rulings in Raich and Comstock, but predicting how the Supreme Court will rule on any issue is an inexact science at best.

Randy Barnett at the Volokh Conspiracy had this to say:

With the challenges to the individual mandate, however, Congress is explicitly asserting that the individual mandate is "necessary and proper" to execute its power under the Commerce Clause. Moreover, the argument for "necessity" is reasonably straight-forward: it is necessary to compel all uninsured persons into the insurance pool to pay for the increased costs being imposed on insurance companies by the Act. Under the Court's normal deferential approach, finding "necessity" won't be hard.

The problem with the mandate is whether it is a "proper" means to achieve a constitutional end. The Court has previously held that mandating state legislatures (in New York v. U.S.) and executive officials (in Printz v. U.S.) is an "improper" commandeering of states and therefore violates the Tenth Amendment's reservation of powers "to the states." The challenges to the individual mandate raise the issue of whether mandating all persons to enter into a contract with a private company is "improper" commandeering of the people and therefore violates the Tenth Amendment's reservation of powers "to the people." Because such a commandeering has never been previously been attempted, the Court will have to address whether it is an "appropriate" (McCulloch) means to achieving an enumerated end, however "necessary" it may be. Deciding this question return the Court to the scope of the Commerce Clause.

In Comstock, nothing about the incarceration of sexually dangerous persons was alleged to be an "improper" means of pursuing an enumerated end. The issue was whether or not the statute was enacted pursuant to an enumerated power. The majority held it was-all the enumerated powers for which the original criminal incarceration was the means-while the dissent disagreed.

Would love to get the legal experts' opinions on the nexus between Constock and the individual mandate, but while it seems like there are some good questions for Kagan to be found within the scope of the case she argued and which is part of the pubic record; I don't expect she will extend her remarks to a discussion of Comstock's implications for the individual mandate.

Paul is a real head-scratcher allright, he'll justify away key libertarian beliefs on the issues of drug and immigration law, pressing issues of the day where a dose of ibertarian is needed...but draw an ideological line over the Civil Rights Act?  Any political ideology taken to an extreme is disasterous...some libertarians sure pick a funny place to draw their lines.

1. marijuana -- illegal, but people in CA and elsewhere fighting to overturn

2. DOMA --- being fought in states and by groups to overturn

3. physician assisted suicide --- illegal under federal law, but Oregon passed a law which was upheld by SCOTUS.

How about abortion?  We believe in a right to privacy between patient/ doctor... SCOTUS decisions would support government has limits to how much it can interfere with those private health decisions...