All along, in the Obama era, I've had the feeling that the short-cuts and illegalities of the Obamis was, in the words of Talleyrand, worse than a crime, a blunder.
In other words, there's a reason that you obey the law and don't use the bureaucracy to harass your enemies. It is to prevent the opposition from getting really riled up and unified.
Remember the 2000s. The liberal activists used any questionable Bush administration act to whip their partisans into a frenzy, starting with the vote recounts in 2000 and continuing to the Bush Lied, People Died accusations about the entry into the Iraq War, and continuing with the eternal flap over Scooter Libby outing a CIA employee. My liberal friends would give me a good flogging about these mild illegalities, which really weren't illegal at all.
Now we have President Obama asserting the right not to enforce laws like the Defense of Marriage Act or declining to enforce immigration laws. The Obamacare rollout would be impossible without the president choosing which unworkable provision to delay or ignore next.
Today the Wall Street Journal edit page joins the chorus with a comment on the willful disregard of the law at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC is stacked with Obama and Reid cronies that don't want to go ahead with the Yucca Flats nuclear storage site. Only problem is it's against the law, and the US Appeals Court has so ruled.
If the head of the NRC worked on Wall Street, "he'd be indicted" for this kind of shenanigans, writes the Journal. At least if he were a Republican.
And then there's my favorite, little Lois Lerner, who seems to have been using her private email to conduct government business, like some others we know.
The point about all this petty illegality is that it makes it much easier for the Republicans to run in 2014 and 2016. You may not want to give up your entitlements but you sure don't like government officials getting off with breaking the law and giving themselves exemptions and insider deals.
So I think that the "laws are for the little people" attitude in the Obama administration and the go-along-to-get-along attitude in the media amounts to a strategic error.
A government needs to demonstrate that it follows the rules and respects its opponents. Not because it is right, but because it avoids riling up the opposition.
The liberal media needs to keep liberals in line just as much as the hated conservatives.
Same thing with Obama's recent executive decision to exempt Congress and its staff from Obamacare. When people are suffering next year from the chaos of Obamacare they will not like the idea that their representatives and their staffers got themselves exempted from the chaos. Even a low information voter gets that.
But you never know. Maybe the American people will just sit there and take it and elect Hillary Clinton president in 2016 because she's a woman.
In other words, there's a reason that you obey the law and don't use the bureaucracy to harass your enemies. It is to prevent the opposition from getting really riled up and unified.
Remember the 2000s. The liberal activists used any questionable Bush administration act to whip their partisans into a frenzy, starting with the vote recounts in 2000 and continuing to the Bush Lied, People Died accusations about the entry into the Iraq War, and continuing with the eternal flap over Scooter Libby outing a CIA employee. My liberal friends would give me a good flogging about these mild illegalities, which really weren't illegal at all.
Now we have President Obama asserting the right not to enforce laws like the Defense of Marriage Act or declining to enforce immigration laws. The Obamacare rollout would be impossible without the president choosing which unworkable provision to delay or ignore next.
Today the Wall Street Journal edit page joins the chorus with a comment on the willful disregard of the law at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC is stacked with Obama and Reid cronies that don't want to go ahead with the Yucca Flats nuclear storage site. Only problem is it's against the law, and the US Appeals Court has so ruled.
If the head of the NRC worked on Wall Street, "he'd be indicted" for this kind of shenanigans, writes the Journal. At least if he were a Republican.
And then there's my favorite, little Lois Lerner, who seems to have been using her private email to conduct government business, like some others we know.
The point about all this petty illegality is that it makes it much easier for the Republicans to run in 2014 and 2016. You may not want to give up your entitlements but you sure don't like government officials getting off with breaking the law and giving themselves exemptions and insider deals.
So I think that the "laws are for the little people" attitude in the Obama administration and the go-along-to-get-along attitude in the media amounts to a strategic error.
A government needs to demonstrate that it follows the rules and respects its opponents. Not because it is right, but because it avoids riling up the opposition.
The liberal media needs to keep liberals in line just as much as the hated conservatives.
Same thing with Obama's recent executive decision to exempt Congress and its staff from Obamacare. When people are suffering next year from the chaos of Obamacare they will not like the idea that their representatives and their staffers got themselves exempted from the chaos. Even a low information voter gets that.
But you never know. Maybe the American people will just sit there and take it and elect Hillary Clinton president in 2016 because she's a woman.
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