If the courts struck down the whole bill....

[anvi]

I suppose hypothetically there would be more of an upside for Romney.  But I suspect John Roberts is smart enough to know that such a decision would destroy the legitimacy of his court, so I doubt he would vote for a total strikedown.  The vast majority of the bill's provisions haven't got the slightest thing to do with the "mandate," so I don't know where they would derive the legal justification for that kind of decision.

[anvi]

Yes, fair enough; the absence of a severability clause in the law does give the court discretion.  But I think it would behoove SCOTUS, having made such a showcase of the oral arguments, to base their decision on a finding regarding the law's contents, and one would be hard pressed, as I see it, to make a credible case that even a majority of the bill's provisions were tethered to the "mandate."

I guess I just find this whole case to have the character of Alice in Wonderland.  We're calling something a "mandate" that has no enforcement provision.  We're using the sliding scale argument about Commerce Clause carte blanche for this law, which is explicitly limited to the regulation of the health care market, in the face of SCOTUS decisions from Gibbons vs. Ogden to Reich v. Gonzalez which have given Congress pretty much plenary authority over regulating commerce.   Hell, after what Scalia wrote in his opinion upholding Reich, for him to turn around now and knock down the "mandate," he'll have to become a contortionist. 

But, then again, every issue seems to be like that; up is down and down up nowadays, so perhaps Wonderland is our new normal.