obviously, would have had a huge political cudgel, it would have undone the greatest legislative achievement of president obama's first term, one of the greatest democratic achievements ever, and their caricature of him as an overreaching president would have moved mainstream, so there was great potential reward for republicans in having challenged this law, had they won, and the risk to them was, frankly, not that big. the republicans did lose badly at the court, but they are where they were before in politics, vehemently opposed to health care reform, but their own idea for what we ought to do is still we ought to kill medicare, which is the one thing in our health care system that everybody likes and everybody agrees is sort of working, so that's baggage a for them, baggage b for them is their presidential nominee is a guy that did this exact same health reform policy at the state level, so that's where republicans were before the ruling and after the ruling too,