Bill O’Reilly promised on the March 26th episode of The O’Reilly Factor to replay his interview with Caroline Fredrickson and “apologize for being an idiot” if the Supreme Court ruled in favor of upholding the individual health care mandate.

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Mitt Romney promised today he would “replace” Obamacare on his first day as president, but it’s obviously much harder than that.

David Frum: “Even if Republicans do win the White House and Senate in 2012, how much appetite will they then have for that 1-page repeal bill? Suddenly it will be their town halls filled with outraged senior citizens whose benefits are threatened; their incumbencies that will be threatened. Already we are hearing that some Republicans wish to retain the more popular elements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Which means the proposed 1-page bill will begin to grow.”

Ryan Lizza:
“Far-sighted conservatives always thought that their great hope for
toppling Obama’s most important legislative achievement was through the
courts. They were correct.”

President Obama was just outside the Oval Office this morning “when he got the news — erroneous, as it turned out — that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the individual mandate in his signature health care law, deeming it unconstitutional,” ABC News reports.

“Standing with White House chief of staff Jack Lew and looking at a television in the ‘Outer Oval’ featuring a split screen of four different networks, the president saw graphics on the screens of the first two cable news networks to break the news — CNN and Fox News Channel — announcing, wrongly, that he had lost.”

Nate Silver notes that “given the public’s confusion over the health care law, my view has been to keep it simple: Mr. Obama got the good headline here, and that is likely to be most of what the public reacts to.”

Bloomberg TV: Who wins in Supreme Court health care ruling?

Timothy Carney notes that repealing the individual health care mandate takes only 51 votes in the U.S. Senate because you can’t filibuster a bill passed under “budget reconciliation.” Since the Supreme Court ruled today that the health care law’s individual mandate is a tax, Republicans “could simply lower the tax for not having health insurance down to $0.00, as a matter of budget reconciliation.”

“Since it’s a tax and not a mandate, there can’t be any penalty for not having health insurance above and beyond the tax. So, voila! No more mandate!”

However, a reader points out that the Byrd rule prohibits using reconciliation to cut taxes without offsetting revenue increases.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Chicago Tribune that the Supreme Court’s healthcare decision was “historic” and that it was a good thing President Obama ignored his warnings about the political perils of tackling health care.

Said Emanuel: “I gave him my advice. I told him many times (about) the political cost of doing this. And thank God for the country, he didn’t listen to me.”

He added that having Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican appointee, tip the balance of the court was “rich with irony.”

National Journal reports that after the Supreme Court’s health care decision House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called Vicki Kennedy, widow of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and told her, “Now, Teddy can rest.”

“If we want to replace Obamacare, we have to replace Obama.”

— Mitt Romney, quoted by Politico, commenting on the Supreme Court upholding President Obama’s health care law.

The House will vote on a full repeal of President Obama’s health care law during the week of July 9, Politico reports.

The scheduling of another repeal vote came less than an hour after the Supreme Court upheld the health care mandate.

Said House Speaker John Boehner: “Today’s ruling underscores
the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety.”

Politico: “The Supreme Court has upheld the health care reform law’s individual mandate in an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined in by Justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.”

It looks a like a big, big win for President Obama.

CNN: “Because the individual mandate has been upheld, and is essentially the
funding behind everything else, this can be seen in large part as a
major victory for President Obama.”

New York Times: “The decision was a striking victory for the president and Congressional Democrats, with a majority, including the conservative chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., affirming the central legislative pillar of Mr. Obama’s term.”

Washington Post: “The potentially game-changing, election-year decision — a major victory for the White House less than five months before the November elections — will help redefine the power of the national government and affect the health-care choices of millions of Americans.”

Wonk Wire has more details on today’s decisions.

“When we talk about Obama 20 or 30 years from now, this is likely to be the bill we talk about. If the Supreme Court takes away from Obama his biggest accomplishment, this is exactly what a president really fears. In some ways, it’s worse than not getting re-elected.”

— Presidential historian Julian Zelizer, quoted by Bloomberg, on the fate of President Obama’s health care law.

The Wall Street Journal notes President Obama “has been doing more than sitting back and waiting” for the Supreme Court’s health care decision. He has “three separate speeches prepared in anticipation of the ruling on his signature legislative achievement.”

“One of the speeches addresses a complete overturn of the law, while another is crafted as if the court strikes down the law’s individual mandate but upholds other provisions. The third speech, for if the court upholds the entire law, is more celebratory, according to this person.”

First Read: “We can report that if the U.S. Supreme Court finds the health-care law
constitutional, Obama will comment from the White House fairly soon
after the decision. But if it’s unconstitutional — or if the ruling is a
mixed bag — reaction from Obama could come later in the day.”

Wonk Wire: How to read a Supreme Court decision.

“Many expect an activist Supreme Court will strike down part or all of health reform. If they strike down the mandate, the Supreme Court will be paving the way to a single-payer system, or back to the old broken health care system.”

— Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), quoted by TPM.

Take our poll over at Wonk Wire.

Despite conventional wisdom that most or all of President Obama’s health care law will be overturned by the Supreme Court tomorrow, Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog disagrees:

“I believe the mandate will not be invalidated tomorrow. Far less important, I expect the principal opinion will be written by the Chief Justice; a majority of the Court will find it has jurisdiction; and the challenge to the Medicaid expansion will be rejected.”

“Most observers disagree. There are certainly good reasons to believe the Court will invalidate the mandate. Most important, at the oral argument, the questions of two critical Justices – Justice Kennedy and the Chief Justice – were on the whole critical of the mandate’s constitutionality. But in the end, based on the entire mix of information I have, I think the mandate will not be struck down tomorrow.”

A new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds just 36% express a favorable opinion of the health care law under Supreme Court review, but just 39% like the health care system as it currently stands.

“That means that while the intended fix is unpopular, so is the status quo – leaving the public still in search of solutions.”

Sean Trende: “The real Supreme Court news on Tuesday wasn’t the Arizona immigration decision or even the summary reversal of the Supreme Court of Montana in the ‘Citizens United 2’ case. It was that the chief justice of the United States didn’t write any of these opinions.”

“This is critically important, because we can now deduce with a reasonably high degree of certainty that John Roberts is writing the lead health care opinion. If we are right about this, then the law is in even deeper trouble that most observers imagined.”

However, Ed Whelan reads the tea leaves and concludes “the Court will invalidate the individual mandate by a 5-4 vote.”

Businessweek: Anthony Kennedy, the Justice everyone is watching.

The Boston Globe previews Mitt Romney’s message after tomorrow’s Supreme Court ruling on President Obama’s health care plan:

“If the law is rejected, Romney plans to argue that Obama wasted both his time, and the time of the American people, by pursuing a policy that doesn’t pass constitutional muster. If the law is upheld, Romney would argue that opponents need to elect him so that he can overturn it himself.”