I’m not a lawyer, but the gist of the various lawyers I have heard blog on this is that the Roberts view describing this as a tax is not a particularly compelling argument. Many individuals seem to feel that Roberts has caught on to the consensus view that the Citizens United ruling was the worst ruling in a century and a half. Some suggest he feared that attaching his name to another terrible ruling would push him over the line from being a simple party hack to being a the worst partisan in the history of the post Civil War Supreme Court.

Personally, I think that voting the way we all know he wanted to vote would not even be particularly bad for him. His court has shown to be radical in the extreme, and one not-particularly-over-the-top ruling does nothing to change that. Don’t get me wrong, I am mildly pleased that he voted correctly. Only for the fact that an asshole-laden Congress cannot surreptitiously negate recently passed laws using the Judicial Branch. But the floodgates of legal bribe money have been irreversibly opened. I don’t think there is enough time left in Roberts’ tenure to undo that damage. Especially since that dirty money will pour into convincing the idiot public that any attempt to stem the flow is downright communism.