Conservative star, Senator Marco Rubio, has endorsed Mitt Romney for President.  That is a BIG get for Romney and one that is yet another nail in the coffin for Rick Santorum’s improbable quest for the nomination.

There are still some important conservatives who have not jumped onto Team Romney, but Rubio’s announcement will lead to more and more asking for a jersey.

I suspect we’ll see a couple this weekend.

Obama’s health care law may be on life support.  After three days of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in the challenge to the health care bill signed into law two years ago, the future of the law is very uncertain.

It’s clear that supporters of the law were rocked by how aggressive the questioning was by Justices Kennedy and Breyer – two justices that are key to which way the decision goes.  The Left is also very unhappy with Obama’s Solicitor General.  Mother Jones wrote, “If the law is upheld, it will be in spite of Verrilli’s performance, not because of it.”

I was struck my Kennedy’s first question right out of the box, “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”  That is how a Supreme Court Justice “gets up in your grill.”

Justices Scalia, Alito and Chief Justice Roberts also asked withering questions.  Justice Thomas was typically silent – he hasn’t asked a question in the last six years.  It is assumed that those four are near-certain to support striking down the individual mandate and based on Kennedy’s questioning, he could be the fifth vote.

What has alarmed the Left more than anything is the discussion in the final day of arguments when the Court discussed whether it was more reasonable to overturn the entire law if they agree that the individual mandate is struck down.

While I strongly believe that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and have been cautiously optimistic that the Court would so rule, I have been very pessimistic about the Court overturning the entire law.  That would be a nice gift to the American people if it were to happen.

Transcripts of the three days of arguments are here:

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday here and here

With oral arguments in the case challenging the individual mandate of Obama’s health care law starting in the Supreme Court on Monday, this piece by Charles Krauthammer is worthy of posting in total. It is a must read.

Obamacare: The reckoning

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: March 22

Obamacare dominated the 2010 midterms, driving its Democratic authors to a historic electoral shellacking. But since then, the issue has slipped quietly underground.

Now it’s back, summoned to the national stage by the confluence of three disparate events: the release of new Congressional Budget Office cost estimates, the approach of Supreme Court hearings on the law’s constitutionality and the issuance of a compulsory contraception mandate.

Cost:

Obamacare was carefully constructed to manipulate the standard 10-year cost projections of the CBO. Because benefits would not fully kick in for four years, President Obama could trumpet 10-year gross costs of less than $1 trillion — $938 billion to be exact.

But now that the near-costless years 2010 and 2011 have elapsed, the true 10-year price tag comes into focus. From 2013 through 2022, the CBO reports, the costs of Obamacare come to $1.76 trillion — almost twice the phony original number.

It gets worse. Annual gross costs after 2021 are more than a quarter of $1 trillion every year — until the end of time. That, for a new entitlement in a country already drowning in $16 trillion of debt.

Constitutionality:

Beginning Monday, the Supreme Court will hear challenges to the law. The American people, by an astonishing two-thirds majority, want the law and/or the individual mandate tossed out by the court. In practice, however, questions this momentous are generally decided 5 to 4 — i.e., they depend on whatever side of the bed Justice Anthony Kennedy gets out of that morning.

Ultimately, the question will hinge on whether the Commerce Clause has any limits. If the federal government can compel a private citizen, under threat of a federally imposed penalty, to engage in a private contract with a private entity (to buy health insurance), is there anything the federal government cannot compel the citizen to do?

If Obamacare is upheld, it fundamentally changes the nature of the American social contract. It means the effective end of a government of enumerated powers — i.e., finite, delineated powers beyond which the government may not go, beyond which lies the free realm of the people and their voluntary institutions. The new post-Obamacare dispensation is a central government of unlimited power from which citizen and civil society struggle to carve out and maintain spheres of autonomy.

Figure becomes ground; ground becomes figure. The stakes could not be higher.

Coerciveness.

Serendipitously, the recently issued regulation on contraceptive coverage has allowed us to see exactly how this new power works. All institutions — excepting only churches, but not excepting church-run charities, hospitals, etc. — will be required to offer health care that must include free contraception, sterilization and drugs that cause abortion.

Consider the cascade of arbitrary bureaucratic decisions that resulted in this edict:

(1) Contraception, sterilization and abortion pills are classified as medical prevention. On whose authority? The secretary of health and human services, invoking the Institute of Medicine. But surely categorizing pregnancy as a disease equivalent is a value decision disguised as science. If contraception is prevention, what are fertility clinics? Disease inducers? And if contraception is prevention because it lessens morbidity and saves money, by that logic, mass sterilization would be the greatest boon to public health since the pasteurization of milk.

(2) This type of prevention is free — no co-pay. Why? Is contraception morally superior to or more socially vital than — and thus more of a “right” than — penicillin for a child with pneumonia?

(3) “Religious” exemptions to this edict extend only to churches, places where the faithful worship God, and not to church-run hospitals and charities, places where the faithful do God’s work. Who promulgated this definition, so stunningly ignorant of the very idea of religious vocation? The almighty HHS secretary.

Today, it’s the Catholic Church whose free-exercise powers are under assault from this cascade of diktats sanctioned by — indeed required by — Obamacare. Tomorrow it will be the turn of other institutions of civil society that dare stand between unfettered state and atomized citizen.

Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. He’d rather talk about other things.

But there’s no escaping it now. Oral arguments begin Monday at 10 a.m.

Mitt Romney’s huge victory in the Illinois primary has effectively ended the GOP nomination process. Regardless of what Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich say, there is no path to the nomination remaining for them.

I have been predicting since January 22nd that Romney has secured the nomination. Back then I wrote that April 24th was his true firewall – and tonight proved that wrong. March 20th will go down in the history books as the moment that Romney secured the nomination.

Now let’s get to the business of a head-to-head between Romney and Obama.

It appears that the hypocrisy of the left is starting to catch up with them.  David Axelrod – President Obama’s political guru – was scheduled to appear on Bill Maher’s show and has abruptly canceled.

I’m guessing it has something to do with the exposure of Maher’s outrageous and misogynist outbursts, particularly those captured in web videos like this one on RejectMaher.com.

Tonight could be the end for Rick Santorum.  After an influential group of conservatives recently committed to raising a couple million bucks for the Santorum campaign and the SuperPac supporting Santorum, it is possible that he comes in third place in the Alabama and Mississippi primaries.

Most commentators (including yours truly) have written Gingrich off for dead.  But if Gingrich wins either or both of the primaries tonight, and Romney holds Santorum to third in both, the dynamics of the race will have shifted yet again.

In some ways, it’s window dressing.  The dance back and forth between Santorum and Gingrich is ultimately meaningless to the nomination: it’s going to Romney.

[This post will be updated as the night goes on]

This is going to be a big day for Mitt Romney.  He will win Ohio, Virginia, Idaho, Massachusetts and Vermont.  He will come in second in Georgia, and thus will take a decent number of delegates out of that state.

At the end of the night, it will be clear that Romney is in the driver’s seat and the nomination is essentially his.  Newt Gingrich should do the honorable thing and drop out – having only one win tonight – and Rick Santorum should also drop out, recognizing that he has no chance of beating Obama.

[UPDATE 6:00 p.m.EST]

Exit polls show that Romney will win OH, VA, VT and MA.  Santorum will win TN and OK.  Gingrich will win GA, but be held below 50%, allowing Romney to get a decent chunk of delegates as the second place winner.

[UPDATE 8:30 p.m. EST]

Romney has been declared the winner in VA, VT and MA.  Gingrich has won GA, where Romney and Santorum are within a couple hundred votes vying for second place. Santorum has won Oklahoma.

Ohio polls are closed and with a mere 1% reporting, Romney leads Santorum by 3% – way too early to call.

[UPDATED 9:30 p.m. EST]

Santorum holds a nearly 4% lead over Romney in Ohio with 29% of precincts reporting.  This could get interesting.

Santorum has also won TN and it looks like he may win ND.

This night is far from over.

[UPDATE 10:10 p.m. EST]

Santorum remains in the lead in Ohio by less than 2% (about 10,000 votes) with about 55% reporting.  The good news for Romney is that there a lot of ballots to count in areas where he is strong.  Even if Santorum wins the statewide vote, Romney will gain a large number of delegates, since they are distributed by Congressional district.

So we continue to wait on Ohio.

[UPDATE 11:55 p.m. EST]

Mitt Romney appears to have squeaked out a win in Ohio. He won the population centers of Cleveland, Dayton, Columbus and Cincinnati.  He has also won Idaho.  Huge night for Romney.  The nomination is effectively secured.

[UPDATE 1:00 a.m. EST]

Romney’s wins in OH, VA, VT, ID and MA along with delegate gains in GA, ND, OK and TN give him a total of 386 delegates to Santorum’s 156 and Gingrich’s 85.  Congratulations to Romney for securing the Republican nomination.

Mitt Romney is, as country band “Big and Rich” would sing, “rollin’, rollin’, rollin.’” Mitt Romney continues to show broad strength in the GOP nomination contest with a big win in the Washington State caucuses.  He bested Ron Paul and Rick Santorum (who are only a couple hundred votes apart) by more than 10 points.

This gives Romney additional momentum going into “Super Tuesday” and the most important contest that day, Ohio.

Unless Santorum can pull off some solid wins next Tuesday, it’s going to be hard for him to justify continuing his campaign.  Gingrich has no business continuing forward, but since his head is in lunar mode, he still hasn’t recognized he has long overstayed his welcome.

For all intents and purposes, the general election is on – and it’s time for Republicans as a party to focus all of their energy on making Obama a one term President.

So the debate over who is more conservative, Ben Quayle or David Schweikert, continues to point to Quayle being more conservative.

The American Conservative Union (the group that organizes CPAC) released it’s 2011 Congressional Scorecard today.

Qualye scored a perfect 100 and Schweikert scored 96.

That’s a close score, it represents one vote in which Qualye and Schweikert differed.  So, it appears that it isn’t that big of a deal.

But the details point out something disturbing.  Here is how the ACU lists this particular vote:

Spending increase. HR 2354 (Roll Call 586)

The House passed an amendment to the Energy and Water Appropriations bill increasing spending on renewable energy and energy efficiency programs by $10 million. These programs had received massive increases in the 2009 budget and the Obama stimulus program. ACU opposes these attempts to reverse modest spending cuts and opposed this amendment. Nevertheless, the House passed the amendment on July 15, 2011 by a vote of 212-210.

This is stunning.  Schweikert voted to increase spending? What’s worse, it’s to support an industry that has already been one of the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse since Obama took office.  Just picture the infamous Solyndra failure.  Most amazing, is that Schweikert cast the deciding vote for passage.

That’s not very conservative.

As expected, Romney coasted to a solid 47-26 win in Arizona, and topped Rick Santorum in Michigan 41-38, which puts him in the driver’s seat to lock up the nomination next week on Super Tuesday. At this point, Newt Gingrich (who came in third in Arizona and fourth in Michigan) should drop out, something that he really should have done weeks ago.

As I wrote back in January, Romney is well-positioned to secure the nomination. Last week, I wrote that Romney was going to win Arizona by double digits and also win Michigan.

Romney has proven his ability to win when it matters, and Santorum should join with Gingrich and drop out, conceding the nomination to Romney, so we can move on as a party.

Super Tuesday next week will solidify Romney’s status as the Republican nominee, and for either Gingrich or Santorum to stay in the race only wastes resources that could be used to beat President Obama in November.