No Going Back – Implimentation of Obamas E.O’s must be stopped.

National Review (NR) and Jim Geraghty are generally pretty hard core on the issue of immigration, taking the conservative pro-culture line and challenging leftist views.

Today’s Morning Jolt  with Jim Geraghty, an NRO feature. . . leads with the truthful statement, (not elaborated on):

Obama to Announce Plan to Vastly Expand National Pool of Low-Skilled Labor

John Boehner’s office collected 22 times when President Obama said he couldn’t ignore Congress and/or create his own immigration law. A couple of the most glaring and sweeping declarations:

Geraghty highlights a few choice quotes from the list including this one from Obama —

“This is something I’ve struggled with throughout my presidency. The problem is that I’m the president of the United States, I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed. And Congress right now has not changed what I consider to be a broken immigration system. And what that means is that we have certain obligations to enforce the laws that are in place even if we think that in many cases the results may be tragic.” (2/14/13)

Geraghty comments:

In light of this, it is not the least bit outrageous for critics of Obama to accuse him of acting like an Emperor.

Something we have charged on occasion in these pages.

But Geraghty gets off kilter when he suggests the futility of impeachment proceedings and that the effort would only rally Democrats. Our first thought is that such thoughts are weak think, and just what the Democrats want Republicans to assume. We are more simpatico on the subject with his fellow NRO writer Andrew McCarthy.  While Geraghty’s  position is arguable,  we are sorely disappointed with the following from Geraghty (which also seems to undermine his assumptions about impeachment by the way):

The silver lining: All of this can be undone by an executive order from the next president. And just as the White House seemed to have no idea of the kind of Republican wave they would experience in the midterms, they are walking around with way too much confidence about the popularity of this move . . .

This decision will get less popular after dominating a news cycle.

If this was really a good idea, Obama would have done it before the election. He knows this is going to invite a backlash, which is why he had to wait.

We’ve got an issue that we can use to drive a wedge right down the middle of the Democratic coalition — liberals on one side, unions and African-Americans on the other. We’ve got a ready-made argument, that President Obama and his allies took action to make life easier for illegal immigrants, while they make life harder for you.

The problem is that it provides nothing for the rule of law or principle.  By the same token the next Democrat president can go right back and do it again.  His silver lining is politically very tenuous anyway, assuming that a Republican would reverse Obama’s actions. Obama’s actions  become fait acompli politically and we believe judicially. After all which could be relied on to walk back any of it?  That is one of the reasons that people like Harry Reid are advocating that Obama go full tilt with his executive orders.   R Mall

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