Topic: Politics & Elections
…but it isn’t. That’s the funny thing about the Community Organizer-in-Chief’s, er, President Obama’s, end run around the Constitution of the United States.
Wait, though, it’s not really that either. As a matter of law Obama may well be within his rights to suspend deportations of millions of illegal aliens and give them work permits. But all he’s doing is putting five million-odd people into administrative limbo. He can’t amnesty them, can’t make them permanent residents, can’t place them on a path to citizenship. They’ll be just as illegal tomorrow as they are right now. So what’s the point?
Obama probably thinks that by doing this he can put the squeeze on the incoming Republican Congress, forcing them into passing his version of comprehensive immigration reform. Some hope! The leverage he imagines he has is nonexistent and his unilateral action scotches any possibility that such a bill could reach his desk. At best, the GOP House and Senate will be sending to the Oval Office piecemeal immigration reform bills the contents of which the President will find highly obnoxious. Knowing Obama, he’ll pout and veto them, all the while decrying those obstructionist Republican bastards on Capitol Hill.
Unfortunately for Obama, in this political poker game Republicans hold the high card. The American people are opposed, repeat, opposed to anything that smacks of amnesty via executive action. Don’t believe me? Look at the polls. All the Republicans have to do is present themselves as grownups dealing as best they can with a presidential temper tantrum. To do this they don’t have to impeach Obama or shut down the government. They just have to force him into using his veto pen—over and over and over again. Given the temperament of our king-emperor, that shouldn’t be difficult.
I’m sure there are people on the Left smart enough to have figured all of the above. Probably they comfort themselves with the thought that the GOP, driven insane by Barry’s master stroke, will have another Ted Cruz moment—closing down national parks, ripping up the food stamps of the underclass, etc. But the campaign leading up to the midterms showed that Republicans have learned their lesson on that score. Instead they seem content to follow Napoleon’s advice: Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. For President Obama, his party and whichever Democrat is destined to carry the 2016 presidential standard, that is very bad news indeed.
