http://spectator.org/articles/60161/right-now-there-nothing-we-can-do-about-obamaRIGHT NOW THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT OBAMA
Resistance is futile.
By Scott McKay – 8.4.14
The great fear among conservatives, stoked by the actual statements of the Obama White House and one of its chief sycophants, Congress Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, is that the president will step far beyond the constitutional limits of his power and grant amnesty through executive fiat to as many as six million illegal aliens.
This would be political suicide for Obama. It would be an act of brazen stupidity and it would likely not only destroy any chance his party has to retain control of the Senate but could potentially fracture his own coalition for future elections. Already Obama polls at just a 31 percent approval rating on the immigration issue. If he were to take such a rash step his presidency could well implode—particularly when the butcher’s bill comes in the November elections. Democratic senators Mary Landrieu, Kay Hagan, Mark Pryor and Mark Udall, all of whom currently have fighting chances at re-election, would be roadkill.
And once he’s squandered his Senate majority and becomes a lame-duck president, the internecine fighting within Obama’s party would transcend the imaginations of the folks who write House of Cards.
We’ll have to satisfy ourselves with that. Which, while it’s not nothing, won’t pacify us. Particularly when we all know that amnesty leads to citizenship, and citizenship for millions of illegals means millions of new Democratic voters. And that’s what all this is about: the American electorate that rejected the Democratic cabal in 2010 must be replaced with one that is, in the not-so-immortal words of Ming the Merciless, “satisfied with less.”
It’s by no means certain that the mass-amnesty gambit will have that long-range effect, but our side is rightfully appalled by it. It’s no surprise, then, that social media is erupting with demands for John Boehner to get tough with Obama: denying funds to the executive branch, impeachment, whatever it takes to put a stop to the lawlessness.
Impeachment was discussed a good deal last week. We all know the score there. Obama is more impeachable as a matter of conduct than any president in modern times. But no Democrat in the Senate will cross the aisle and vote to impeach, which means no sixty-seven votes to remove. This is true no matter how bad things get after the midterms. Even Andrew McCarthy, who literally wrote the book on impeaching Obama, doesn’t think it’s doable under current circumstances. Hence the president's flunkies, who won’t shut up about impeachment and are in fact attempting to goad Congress into pursuing it.
And it gets worse. The purse is no help. If you defund certain parts of the government in an effort to get him to change policy, Harry Reid will kill your budget bill in the Senate and that will lead to a shutdown: bad politics, especially in an election year.
And as it happens, because of the way we know Obama does business if there is a shutdown he'll make sure the Border Patrol leaves the border wide open and ICE opens those detention facilities so all the tattoo-faced MS-13 goons who make up a terrifying percentage of the current influx through our border will have the run of the country.
Meaning that any attempt to use the power of the purse to close the border will have the unintended consequence of wiping out the border. Plus, conservatives will be the ones who get clobbered in the November congressional races for having tried to restore lawful governance to the executive branch.
What this man is doing is appalling. Everyone—including those people in his own party who actually care about this country, its constitutional framework and the rule of law—ought to be appalled by it. What’s more, it’s incumbent on us to explore as many creative strategies and tactics as possible to inflict political pain on Obama and reel him in. Civil disobedience should be on the table. State action—even nullification—should be considered.
In fact, state action nullifying unconstitutional administration policies might well be a better answer than anything Congress can do, because it requires money for the Feds to respond to the states. And when the House refuses to appropriate any funds for that response, Obama is forced to be a bit more docile and cooperative.
But we aren’t at that point. Until there are external forces applied to Washington which change the equation, anything Boehner does is destined to fail. Boehner is to blame for allowing this situation to get this far gone, yes, but neither we nor he can fix that now.
The problem of a president willing to destroy our border and our Constitution for the purposes of partisan political gain has been years in the making. And it will not be solved by a House vote or the stroke of a pen. Unless somebody has some out-of-the-box ideas, we’re going to have to swallow it, and get our revenge starting in November.
