Republican Leadership: What are You Prepared to Do?

Fresh off their mid-term tidal wave, the Republicans now face the same dilemma as in the story line of “The Untouchables”—the 1987 classic about dealing with Al Capone in Chicago. As Sean Connery asked Kevin Costner, “What are you prepared to do?” Republican leadership must now decide what they are prepared to do to stop a President hell bent on taking executive action that ignores the Constitution and overturns current U.S. immigration law, by granting amnesty to 4-5 million illegal immigrants—a policy objective that a majority of Americans reject.

By now everyone should understand that the U.S. faces this dilemma because Barack Obama has been extended the benefit of the doubt on so many controversial actions taken during his first six years as President. As a result, he is now emboldened to take an unprecedented action with enormous impact that leads directly to a constitutional crisis, and potentially to civil unrest. While some might ask, why is the President in such a hurry and why can’t he just do his job as President, which is to faithfully execute the laws Congress passes and to uphold the Constitution? Perhaps the best way to understand Obama’s intent is to view this latest anticipated action in the context of the other unilateral actions that he has taken in his first six years. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and review highlights of the Obama legal record of firsts:

• In 2009, he became the first president to abrogate well-established bankruptcy law to turn over control of General Motors to its unions who helped elect him.
• First President to issue unlawful recess-appointments at influential regulators—the NLRB and CFPB—while the U.S. Senate remained in session.
• First President to sue states for enforcing their own voter ID laws
• First President to claim Executive Privilege to shield his Attorney General who was held in contempt of Congress for not responding to subpoenas to turn over records pertaining to a reckless and unprecedented program, known as Fast and Furious, which resulted in a border patrol agent’s murder.

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First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

First President to attempt blocking a major manufacturing company—Boeing—from its legal right to open a manufacturing line in a right to work state—South Carolina.

First President to arbitrarily declare the existing law under the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and unenforceable.

First President to sue states for enforcing immigration laws passed by Congress.

First President to have his EPA repudiated by a Federal Judge for illegally attempting to shut down coal operations in Appalachia.

First President to push passage of an international sea treaty, which could encroach upon U.S. territorial waters and provide for vetoing and levying tax on deep sea projects that U.S. firms are uniquely able to successfully and profitably develop.

First President to bypass Congress and ram through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, aka Dream Act, by Executive Order.

What is common to all of Obama’s executive actions is that they were enacted less to solve problems than they were to weaken the rule of law and to engineer radical political change that could not be accomplished through the ballot box and congressional votes. In fact, Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order in 2012 set the stage for some 60,000 unaccompanied minors to cross the southern border this year in broad daylight. It is time to recognize that Barack Obama’s actions that show little respect for compromise inherent in the democratic process and the two-party system, the rule of law, and the Constitutional constraints of the separation of powers are a result of his goal—expressed in his words—to “fundamentally transform the United States.” This latest wholesale executive action is likely to lead to far greater numbers of illegal immigrants flooding into the United States and a defacto broadening of the base for a one party state—a permanent Democratic Party majority. Democratic Party pollster and strategist Pat Cadell said it best, publicly describing Barack Obama as “a raging narcissist who doesn’t care if he destroys this country, [and} this move will tear this country apart.” So the Republican leaders in both houses better be prepared to do whatever is necessary to defend and protect the Constitution and the interests of Americans, the majority of whom just recently and clearly rejected the Obama approach to governing.