Recent polling (from Latino Decisions) shows "basically every Democratic Latino voter supports [Obama's executive] actions, which is not unexpected, but the support holds up across independent and Republican Latino voters.... 85% of independents and 76% of Latinos who identify as Republicans support Obama’s move."
Despite the heaps of justified anguish over Obama's unilateralism, one can't help but relish the political splendor of it all. Republicans have not only foolishly lost a generation of Latino support, they'll wreck themselves in overreaction to the president's move. It's what they do, and Obama should have done it to them even earlier.
As E.J. Dionne observed this morning: "This is a historic moment when all of the divisions, misunderstandings and hatreds of President Obama’s time in office have come to a head. We are in a different place than we were. We are also in a place we were bound to get to eventually." Again, despite the anguish, it wasn't Obama who put us in this place. It was congressional Republicans. They own this.
It's unrealistic of commentators to engage in detached, scholarly debates about proper constitutional procedures when two thirds of our governing branches have held our traditional constitutional system in such unprecedented contempt. I'd be far more worried about Obama's actions if I believed they presaged some permanency. I don't. If Obama's political gambit works, then our constitutional system of balances and negotiations and compromises will someday (soon) return, because the electorate will have unseated the unprecedented problem children. In a way, Obama is rescuing the system by abusing it.
If I've any issue with the president's handling of the fallout, it's in his explanation of consistency. It rings false. Clearly he changed his mind from a year and two years ago, and it makes me cringe to hear him say otherwise. No one is buying his explanation, which has now cheapened his action. Why couldn't the president have simply said that he indeed changed his mind, and that his changed mind came about from fresh legal thinking and empirical research on the matter?
In what particular way has the president exceeded his executive authority that violates the constitution? I'm not seeing anything outside of existing legal precedent.
Posted by: Peter G | November 24, 2014 at 02:26 PM