Obama’s Creeping Authoritarianism

Thoughts from Dan Henninger:

The political left, historically inclined by ideological belief to public policy that is imposed rather than legislated, will support Mr. Obama’s expansion of authority. The rest of us should not.

The U.S. has a system of checks and balances. Mr. Obama is rebalancing the system toward a national-leader model that is alien to the American tradition.

Gee, someone should write a book about this phenomenon.

7 thoughts on “Obama’s Creeping Authoritarianism”

  1. When the House is noticeable for its absence it is hardly unexpected that the office of the President will get the spotlight. If the elected Tea Party congresscritters got into their heads that they are getting paid to do a job rather than regurgitate rhetoric and stall everything and anything I doubt this would be happening right now.

    1. The President always has the spotlight.

      The TP people were elected as a check on Obama’s overreach not to rubberstamp his policies.

      Obama could work with the opposition but his “I won do what I say” mentality is not the best way to work with other people. Bush worked with Democrats despite the rhetoric they directed at him. Obama is treated like a prince by Republicans in comparisson to how Democrats went after Bush.

      But there isn’t any reason to believe that if congress did rubberstamp all of Obama’s policies that he wouldn’t be ruling by executive order.

      1. I keep hearing this but the truth is even with things like healthcare they ended up proposing much the same thing, the individual mandate, that the Heritage foundation proposed and Mitt Romney implemented as governor. If you remember the inclination in the Democratic Party was for there to be a public option. None of that happened.
        So I disagree. It is possible to force different views on issues with Obama. I think the main problem they have with Obama is that he is not willing to share the laurels with anyone. A lot of people have issues working with someone like that.

    2. Interesting comment, Godzilla. So you are saying that the “elected Tea Party congresscritters” should just approve the President’s policies even though they won their election campaigning to oppose specific policies of the President? Did you see that level of cooperation from the opposition party during the previous President’s tenure?

      1. No. They can simply act according to their conscience and vote against proposals. But it is one thing to vote against a proposal and another to try to logjam a proposal using bureaucratic loopholes.

        1. You mean like pretending that a 2000+ page healthcare bill is just a budget issue so that the normal legislative process can be bypassed?

  2. Of course, some people like creeping authoritarianism. The only problem these State-humpers have with it is that they wish it’d stop creeping and start gallopping. No one who posts here, of course.

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