"Hope and change" has morphed into "kneel and yield"

Deploying the logic that led to the demise of the health-care reform schemes of his former Clinton clients, political adviser Mark Penn suggests if the Supreme Court cans Obamacare, the president could spin the decision as political, incentivize states to adopt the individual mandate the Court considered unconstitutional and use the defeat to "actually move him closer to reelection."

Like the president, Mr. Penn ignores the plain fact that Americans hate government mandates.

Most Americans reject the Obamacare mandate to buy health insurance because it violates our fundamental notions of individual choice and free enterprise. Many Americans likewise disapprove the Obamacare mandate to force even religious objectors to subsidize controversial contraceptives--a coercion incongruously defended under the guise of increasing access to a ubiquitous product that the president says 99 percent of women already use.

As this administration continues its audacious attempts to usurp the Constitution and mandate the redistribution of income from political opponents to its political base, more and more Americans are enraged by the recognition that "hope and change" has morphed into "kneel and yield."