RUSH: There are three potential outcomes here. And two of these outcomes I can see as big wins for the left and for Obama, when you look at what they want. What is it they want? They don’t want a mandate. They don’t want the mandate to be said to be constitutional. I mean, they’ll take it but that’s not what their objective is. Their objective is the abolition of private sector health insurance as an industry and the creation of a single-payer health care system with them charge. They want there to be nowhere else for anybody to go for health insurance but to them, and in so doing they can regulate every aspect of our lives.

That’s what they want.

So you have to look at it from this perspective: If they lose this case, if the mandate is found to be unconstitutional, how does that move the ball forward for them?

There is a way. There are a couple ways, in fact.

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RUSH: Here’s another example of what I’m talking about, sort of. Politico: “Breaking News!” Today, by the way, the court was dealing with severability, and that’s key in determining how can Obama and the Democrats get what they want by having the mandate determined unconstitutional. I think, frankly, we ought to listen James Carville.

James Carville is telling us what the Democrats want. They won’t mind if they lose this mandate. That just speeds ’em along even faster to single-payer as the only solution. “Breaking news!” Politico: “Supreme Court struggled with question of how much of ObamaÂ’s health care law to salvage if justices throw out individual mandate.

“Most of the justices appeared opposed to tossing out the entire law, but their views of how much to keep in place were murky and didn’t break down along conservative and liberal lines.” Okay, so we’re gonna go now from one person determining whether or not the mandate’s constitutional to the entire bunch of nine telling us what part of the law they think is okay and what parts aren’t. And everybody’s (panting) breathlessly waiting like a bunch of starved dogs waiting to be fed. It’s the reality that we live in. I’m just observing. I’m not complaining about it per se because it’s been this way for a long time. It’s just things are different now. The nation hangs in the balance of what happens here with these nine people. So the justices, if they throw out the mandate, now they appear opposed to tossing out the whole thing.

But, see, it can’t survive without the mandate.

The mandate is the funding mechanism.

So, if the judges throw out the mandate but leave enough of the law in, the Democrats who run Congress — if they are still gonna run it — are gonna have a simple solution to this: Medicare for everybody!

Single payer. Done and over.

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RUSH: I hope you were listening in the first hour. This is a classic illustration of what I’m talking about, how everybody gets caught up in the pundit game. And how everybody wants to come up with a scenario that nobody else has come up with. So they can prove when it’s all over that they’re the smartest in the room, while the country is hanging in the balance. And that ought to be what everybody’s talking about. But, no, we’ve got an intellectual feast going on here. And, no, I’m not against smart people. Don’t misunderstand. That’s not what this is about. I’m just our eye isn’t on the ball. This a piece of legislation that’s going to fundamentally, foundationally transform this country.

It’s going to destroy it as founded, if it ever gets implemented. And that ought to be the focus of the debate here. But I understand: The court’s up there deciding it and it’s too exciting to ignore the oral arguments. I’m still… (sigh) I don’t know. I don’t even know how to express it. The idea that here we are a nation of 311 million people, and we now know from an AP story… And I’ve never, by the way, believed these numbers of 42 million uninsured, 50 million uninsured, because they have the emergency room. When they made those arguments of all these people uninsured, incumbent in the argument was, “They don’t get health coverage or treatment! They don’t get medical treatment!”

It’s BS. Everybody gets medical treatment in this country. Even the illegals get it when they show up to the ER. But it turns out that in a nation of 311 million people, only 15 million of them don’t have health insurance. Only 15 million, and the vast majority of those have chosen not to have it. They’re young and think they’re gonna live forever. They’re certainly not gonna get sick. And the others are rich people that’ll pay for it themselves when it happens rather than go out blow a bunch of money on insurance. The numbers of people that really don’t have it is so small and yet we’re doing that?

We’re gonna fundamentally alter the Constitution and the founding of this country for 15 million people who don’t want it? Will we do this for 15 million people who don’t want a Volt? Well, maybe we would, because if this passes… If this does become law, the day’s gonna come where Obama can tell you to buy a Volt in order that we all band together to save General Motors. And don’t think that I’m trying to make you laugh. That is a real possibility. It’s as real as these people telling us that we must own health insurance. These are power hungry, utopian statists. They are in love with tyranny! They are in love with the power over other people that they feel is in their grasp now.

They want to use that power!

If the Volt is failing and General Motors is down the tubes, and they think it’s worth saving General Motors?

They’ll make you go buy a Volt, those of you who can afford it. If you can afford higher taxes they’re going to ladle those on you. Why not make you buy a Volt once they can make you buy health insurance? Now, what’s happening here? The argument over Supreme Court today was over severability. See, they “forgot” to include it. Well, actually, they couldn’t. That’s the dirty little secret. But it’s being said they “forgot” to put a severability clause in it, meaning if one part of it is found unconstitutional, the rest stands. That’s not in the bill. So that was being argued today at the Supreme Court. And based on that we had everybody offering their opinions about what would happen and what it means if A, B, or C happens.

I’ll play the game with you. My version of the game is this: Okay, what do they really want? If I were a pundit on television and I were in competition, say, with Charles Krauthammer or F. Chuck Todd to be the smartest pundit on TV. If that was my objective. If that’s what I wanted at the end of the day. If I didn’t care about the real outcome here, all I wanted was to be the smartest guy. If I wanted everybody to think I’m the smartest guy at the end of the day on this, then what I would say to you is: “Okay, well, what does Obama and what do the left really want here?” And I would tell you they don’t want a mandate. Obama argued against a mandate when he was running against Hillary.

Now, he only did that because Hillary came out for it. He had to differentiate himself, and also to show that he wasn’t a radical. So Obama starts criticizing the mandate much as conservatives today criticize it. He said the same things. “Well, if you can be forcing to go buy health insurance you can be forced to buy anything.” Obama said this, and everybody responded, “Well, look at this guy! He’s a real centrist, man. He’s a really moderate guy, not some radical like those talk radio guys. He’s not some radical. He’s a very reasonable guy.” Oh, no, no; Obama’s wanted single payer from day one. And we’ve got him on tape saying so.

And we’ve got him on tape telling the SEIU that it’s gonna take ten to 15 years to get there and everybody just be patient. The country’s not ready for any of this, he told the union. So we’re gonna have to gradually turn the heat up on the water so they don’t know they’re boiling to death until it’s happening. But their objective is single payer. That’s what they want. They want the government in charge. They want no private health insurance industry or business at all. They want to be the one-stop shop. You have to go to them, and that? Oh! That’s nirvana. That is power over every aspect of your life and the way you live. That’s it. That’s power. That’s what they want. So we have three outcomes. Well, two. Let’s focus on two outcomes.

The first is that the mandate is found to be unconstitutional, but the rest of the bill survives. And the conventional wisdom on that is, “Well, that would be bad for Obama. I don’t know.” And then there are other people who say, “No, that would be great.” And those people are saying, “Lose the mandate but the rest of the bill stands. Well, the funding mechanism is gone so Congress has gotta fix that.” And it’s assumed it will be a Democrat Congress that “fixes” it. So if the mandate’s gone, the funding mechanism, what do they replace it with? “Well, hallelujah! We go right to single payer now. But we don’t call it single payer.

“We’ll do Medicare for everybody! We’re already taxing people for Medicare. We’ll just expand the beneficiary list and raise taxes. Medicare will no longer be for the elderly. It will be for everybody, and we’ve got our single payer. And that will force the private health insurance industry to close up shop.” And there may be some validity to that. There might, in fact, be something to the fact that Obama wouldn’t mind losing the mandate as long as he maintains his position. As long as he’s reelected and the Democrats end up running Congress. Oh, I can see where the mandate being thrown out would be a godsend for ’em.

The second actual possibility: If the mandate’s unconstitutional, what happens to the rest of the law? Does it remain? Is it severable or not? If the court decides that it’s severable, and the rest of the bill stands, then listen to James Carville. (impression) “Hey, the best thing that can happen here is the Democrats would lose at the Supreme Court. That’s the best thing that could happen!” Now, he’s saying the reason it’s the best thing that could happen is because it will fire up the Democrat base. They’ll hate us even more and they’ll get reenergized and they’ll show up in numbers like they did in 2008 and guarantee Obama’s reelection.

Can I tell you what the truth of this is?

Here’s the truth of this. And this is not punditry. And I’m not competing with any pundit when I tell you this. I’m not playing the game with this bit of analysis. Would somebody…? See, I live in Realville. I’m the mayor. Here you have Barack Obama. He’s at 41% approval in the New York Times poll. He’s just as bad in the Washington Post poll. He is really hurting with women. I don’t care what they tell you has been the result of this Fluke business, he is hurting with women. He’s out trying to make it look like he’s okayed the Keystone pipeline. We’ve got a guy who is in trouble. So we’ve got an economy that’s in a shambles. There aren’t any new jobs. Home prices are plummeting.

There’s nothing, there’s not one element of Obama’s record on which he can run for reelection. There’s not one thing they can tout that has been good for America and thus Obama deserves four more years. Not one thing. So the Supreme Court throws out the mandate, let’s say. And let’s say they throw out some other parts of this law. What are they saying? In Realville, where real people live, the Supreme Court has just said: Obamacare is illegal. That’s what “unconstitutional” means. It’s illegal. They want to try to spin that as a positive? Let ’em try! Let them try spinning it. Obama’s signature legislation, the thing his name’s on: Obamacare. The great savior of this country!

And the Supreme Court says it’s illegal, okay? And then let’s couple that with the rest of Obama’s record. This is not something that’s isolated. You’ve got the stimulus that didn’t work. You’ve got all the mortgage assistant programs that didn’t work. You’ve got various other homebuyer assistant programs that didn’t work. You’ve got the green energy boondoggles that didn’t work that led to bankruptcies. You’ve got all the efforts so-called to put people back to work that haven’t worked. You have put this nation in almost unrecoverable debt. And they want us — the Carvilles of the world and these leftist pundits want us — to believe that the architect of a failed stimulus, failed economic policy, failed jobs policy, failed homeowner policy, failed mortgage policy, supporter of Occupy Wall Street, supporter of the New Black Panther Party, supporter of the chaos that’s going on in this country, the cultural rot, somehow wins?

When the court says his law is illegal?

Unh-uh.

Not in Realville.

Let ’em sit there. Let ’em sit there and think they’ve got a big win. Let ’em go through these contortions and pretzel themselves and say, “Oh, yeah, yeah! We lose the mandate and then, why, we just go straight to single payer!” Have you people seen the polling data on Obamacare? Have you seen the polling data on it? You liberals, have you seen the polling data on single-payer health care systems? There isn’t any support for it. (New Castrati impression) “That may be true, Mr. Limbaugh, but we’re not going to call it that! We will fool the American people again because we will simply say, as you just said, ‘Medicare for everyone!’ Everybody loves Medicare.”

Okay, try it.

Go for it.

I love it when presidents are told by courts that the things they believe in are illegal, coupled with all their other failures. Yeah, I love people who also see that as a road to victory. Yeah, the next thing they’re gonna tell us is this was Obama’s grand strategy: To fail at everything but make a great effort at it. Be very popular, be very liked, but fail at jobs, fail at economic recovery, fail at everything. Then force an illegal health care law on the country that it did not want.

And that’s the key to victory!

Yep.

You try that.

Go ahead, Democrats.

I can’t wait.