Do Republicans Really Have a Shot at Crippling Obama's Health Care Reform with a Constitutional Challenge?

No sooner had President Obama signed the health care bill into law last week than a gang of state attorneys general -- all Republicans except one -- jumped to declare it unconstitutional. By the end of the week, no fewer than 14 states had sued the federal government, charging it with a power-grabbing violation of the 10th Amendment.

Supporters of the lawsuits wrapped themselves in the sanctity of the Constitution, but they seemed pretty clearly to be politically motivated. The primary lawsuit was filed in Florida's Northern District by former Bush Department of Justice attorneys, David Rivkin Jr. and Lee Casey, partners at Baker & Hostetler, the former law firm of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. Joined by attorneys general from South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Michigan, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Washington, Idaho and South Dakota, the lawsuit names Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis as defendants, accusing them of "an unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals living in the Plaintiffs' respective states, by mandating that all citizens and legal residents of the United States have qualifying health care coverage or pay a tax penalty."

The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying healthcare coverage. By imposing such a mandate, the Act exceeds the powers of the United States under Article I of the Constitution and violates the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution.

Meanwhile, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who had vowed to sue over health reform "as soon as the ink is dry" (and who has previously sued the Environmental Protection Agency for its regulation of greenhouse gases), filed a separate lawsuit in his home state. ("It's more cost efficient to start the process of challenging the bill as soon as possible," Cuccinelli's office explained to the Washington Post. "There are significant costs in implementing the health care law, so if it is going to be found unconstitutional, then we can save taxpayer money and trouble by making that determination sooner rather than later.")

The various AGs joining the lawsuits wasted no time going on television to make their case. Moments after Obama signed the historic legislation, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster appeared on the Fox Business Network, declaring the new law "off-the-scale unconstitutional."

"We think it, of course, is a threat to state sovereignty as well as to individual liberty," he said, as Fox simultaneously aired footage of the president hugging his fellow Democrats. "It's a matter of constitutional law and that is why we're taking this step."

"This is a quantum leap," Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning told Hardball's Chris Matthews on MSNBC later in the week. Next, he warned, "they could force us all to use electric cars."

At the same time, a handful of state attorneys generals who have come out and stated that they have no intention of suing the federal government over health care reform have done so to no small amount of political pushback.

On Thursday, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, a Democrat, announced: "I'm not going to commit resources of the Office of Attorney General of Kentucky when budget is being cut, in a time when in last couple of years, budget is being cut 26 percent. I'm not going to commit the resources of this office to a political stunt."

Conway's announcement was in part a response to Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson's declaration earlier this week that the attorney general join the lawsuits against the health care law. "Today I call on Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway to join in this effort and file suit against the federal government for the unconstitutional overreach of its authority with the passage of this health care legislation," Grayson said on Tuesday,