Is it okay for Obama to tell voters that Obamacare's individual mandate is not a tax, while telling the federal courts that it is?

I have been following the ongoing litigation about the constitutionality of Obamacare, and I have very strong opinions about it. But I haven't written much about it here because there are so very many other conservative and libertarian law-bloggers who are doing such a good job — including many of them who are directly involved in the litigation — that I haven't felt I had anything novel or useful to add. However, I was much struck by the concluding paragraphs of Wisconsin conlaw professor Ann Althouse's post today entitled "The Obama Administration clearly states that the individual mandate is not a tax" (all emphasis hers):

Well, I suppose it depends on what the meaning of the word "tax" is. It's one thing for the purpose of political argument: Democrats in Congress didn't want to call it a tax when they were jamming it through, and Obama doesn't want to call it a tax now as he's promoting a budget with no new taxes for those making less than $250,000 a year. But for the purposes of legal argument, you might want to characterize it as a tax. The serious question is whether the Supreme Court will accept that characterization for the purpose of upholding the law, even though for political purposes the word was not — and is not — used.

And the answer to that question depends on whether the Justices think that analysis of the political dynamics matters in the interpretation of the scope of Congress's enumerated powers. Whatever the vigor of the Court's role here — and obviously much is left to Congress's political will — it is crucial for the people — exercising their political pressure on the Congress that works its political will — to see what is happening. Even in the thrall of judicial restraint, the Court should reject an argument based fooling the people about what Congress is doing. The people are especially vigilant about new taxes, so denying that something is a tax is an important maneuver in the political arena. If that move is made to ward off public outrage, it should not be easy to turn around win the favor of judges by calling it what you did not dare tell the people it was.

As I said in a comment to her post (reprinted here without blockquoting, slightly edited and expanded here for clarity):

Every statute passed by Congress and signed by the POTUS (or passed over his veto) must be justifiable by some provision of the United States Constitution. That is essential to the maintenance of our Republic as a government of limited, enumerated powers — a government subordinate to, not the dictator over, its people.

Flacks for the Obama Administration, including many lefty lawyers and law professors, would love to persuade you, the people, that they're entitled to rely on one part of the Constitution, the taxing and spending clause, as a justification for Obamacare while they're arguing in the federal courts over its constitutionality, and yet to deny elsewhere that Obamacare involves any "taxes."

"This is complicated lawyer-stuff that only us high priests of penumbras and the living, breathing Constitution can possibly comprehend," they suggest. "Go back to your circuses — look, look, they're handing out more free bread! FREE BREAD!"

(Or maybe just free condoms and birth control pills.)

Democrats are the masters of cognitive dissonance. That's not in dispute and won't change. What might change — as between November 2008 and November 2012 — is the number of rubes who remain enthralled by their shameless hoaxes.