January 16, 2010 11:48 PM UTC

Caldara Fronts "Obamacare Nullification," Colorado Edition

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Grand Junction Sentinel reports:

The head of a free-market think tank wants Colorado to opt out of whatever health care measure Congress ends up approving.

Jon Caldara, president of the Golden-based Independence Institute, filed language Friday for a proposed ballot question this fall that would give Coloradans the right not to purchase health insurance.

Using the slogan, “Obama Care. Hell No, Colorado Won’t Go,” Caldara hopes to get a new amendment tacked onto the Colorado Constitution that he’s calling the “right to health care choice.”

He said mandating all Americans to have health care insurance is a violation of states’ rights…

Michael Huttner, executive director of the Democratic-leaning advocacy group Progress Now, said Caldara’s measure will go nowhere.

“This is nothing more than the right wing and their corporate interests trying to take shots at the Obama administration,” Huttner said. “It’s a sham. The people of Colorado are smarter than this. When they learn who’s behind it … they will learn that this is a complete farce.”

Huttner said the ballot question was drafted by the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, a sister think tank to the Golden group, and is being pushed in at least 10 states. Arizona already placed the idea on its 2010 ballot.

Caldara’s proposal first will have to be reviewed by nonpartisan staff in the Colorado Legislature and then by the Secretary of State’s Office to see if it meets the minimum legal requirements to qualify for the ballot “and the inevitable legal challenges,” Caldara said…

History buffs will remember, of course, the Nullification Crisis of 1832 between the federal government and the state of South Carolina–which ended when South Carolina realized that the federal government has something called “the army,” and declaring that federal law doesn’t apply in your state is therefore not really advisable. The FreedomWorks article we linked to above tells a story a little more favorable to South Carolina, but our version is closer to the bottom line.

A little less than thirty years later, South Carolina learned this “nullification” lesson more directly. Several Supreme Court decisions had already affirmed the superiority of federal law to state law by that time, but you might say the Civil War definitively put an end to the question.

Until Jon Caldara! Are we the only ones who find that entirely appropriate? Never mind that this initiative doesn’t have a hope in hell of surviving a court challenge, and may not even get by initial nonpartisan review. Not like court challenges after passage (or failure at the polls, for that matter) would matter anyway–as long as it’s on the ballot, Caldara’s job is done. No folks, this one’s all about firing up the base, and should be tremendous fun to watch. “Hell no, we don’t want health insurance!” That’s not the exact rallying cry, of course, but what are these middle-class (or better) suburban conservatives who back the Independence Institute going to do? Cancel the insurance they in all likelihood have now out of spite? It’s one of those ideas that sounds good for the first two paragraphs, then stops making any sense–which summarizes Caldara himself pretty well.

One exception to the discomfort this initiative might cause rational individuals would be Scott McInnis, he and his bromance hunting partner Rick “Texas Can Secede” Perry will probably love the idea of nullifying “Obamacare”–at least until after the primary.