Projection; Turning Trump into Obama

Timothy Birdnow

On Facebook one of the resident liberals got his panties in a bunch when someone said the Trump Administration was scrupulous about following the law and appealing bad rulings. This fellow accused  Trump of being completely lawless and claimed he was only reined in when "adults" stopped him.

Now, that is patently absurd; President Trump would have been impeached long ago, and the Republicans would have happily turned him out of office. As it stands, nobody has been able to point to a single incident where Mr. Trump violated a court order or a Constitutional mandate.

I pointed this out tot he fellow. In evidence I submitted tis little reminder of how much Barack Obama violated the law.

From the article:

Obama Only Furthered the Imperial Presidency

He points first to the 2011 Libya intervention. It involved neither a congressional authorization of the use of force, nor compliance with the 1973 War Powers Act, which requires at least congressional notification of troop commitments and affirmative permission after 60 days. Every president since the WPA’s enactment has claimed that it’s an unconstitutional limit on inherent executive authority over military power. Obama instead claimed that hundreds of missile strikes and dozens of air missions didn’t trigger the WPA because they only constituted "kinetic military action” rather than war.

Indeed, once he lost the congressional majority that allowed him to sign breathtakingly unconstitutional legislation like Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, Obama began using his pen in other ways. Hearkening to Woodrow Wilson’s progressive view of the administrative state, President Obama steadily took out his frustrations with the checks and balances that inhibited his ability to "fundamentally transform” the country.

A lack of congressional acquiescence didn’t stop this president. Even in Obama’s first term, the administration launched a "We Can’t Wait” initiative, with senior aide Dan Pfeiffer explaining that "when Congress won’t act, this president will.” And when the reelected President Obama announced his second-term economic plans, he said that "I will not allow gridlock, or inaction, or willful indifference to get in our way.”

But no matter how much you hold it up to the light—and no matter what textual penumbras you induce—there’s no "gridlock clause” in the Constitution by which the president’s power increases to the extent Congress doesn’t support him. Indeed, gridlock is a feature of our system, not a bug, meant to check executive abuse and majoritarian populism both.

And do not forget Obama lied about granting amnesty to illegal aliens to a judge and admitted it in court. He implemented DACA without authorization. He granted waivers from Obamacare to his buddies in the unions in violation of the law. He was truly an imperial president.

As I told this guy, he was projecting. That's all the Left ever does.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 508 words, total size 4 kb.