Tell me: Has any other United States president ever goaded the opposition party to bring impeachment proceedings against himself? Has any other so sneeringly mocked and taunted the other party?
President Obama is not only not the uniter he promised to be; he is the agitator in chief. Just consider the contrast with President George W. Bush, who didn't even defend himself often, much less deride, needle and dare Democrats to oppose him.
It's just like Obama, the dutiful disciple of 1960s leftist radical Saul Alinsky, to divert our attention from his official misconduct by demonizing Republicans and conservatives rightfully challenging his lawlessness.
Obama knows he has habitually exceeded his executive authority, but it's not so much the frequency of his overreaches that is unique. He boastfully claims he hasn't issued so many executive orders as his predecessors did. But that's just more of his misdirection.
It's not unlike his absurd statement that there has been more oil drilling under his administration than under others. What tripe. He conveniently omits that most of the drilling has occurred on private, not government-owned, land.
It's the substance of his executive orders — their dangerous scope and magnitude — that makes them so dangerous and troubling. Even liberal law professor Jonathan Turley notes that it is not the number of his executive orders that matters but their content and reach.
We must recognize that he is doing this premeditatedly. Shortly before issuing his executive order to implement parts of the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, he openly acknowledged — in lobbying for passage of the DREAM Act — that he had no constitutional authority to do it on his own. But when he couldn't get Congress to go along with his ill-advised bill, he issued the order anyway, in total defiance of Congress' legislative prerogative and of his own admission that he couldn't do so.
The law is no obstacle to him. He will not be denied. His latest ploy is to ridicule Republicans for blocking his various amnesty schemes, which he euphemistically describes as "comprehensive immigration reform." He says he wouldn't have to act on his own if Congress would do its job. His adviser Dan Pfeiffer said, "The president has no choice but to act" on immigration.
Excuse me? Congress' job is not to rubber-stamp his statist policies. It is not to get along with him. Its duty is not to President Obama, his agenda or his legacy. It is to do what it believes is best for America and to check his power when he is acting beyond his authority.
There is nothing in the Constitution or case law that empowers a president to act unilaterally when Congress won't go along with him. If this were the case, the Constitution and its entire system of separation of powers would be meaningless.
How cynical this man is to tell the American people that he has a right to act outside the scope of his authority if his intention is "to help people" — as if to turn lawlessness into a virtue. How can members of his own party not be sickened by his contemptuousness toward the Constitution? This isn't just a matter of Obama's jabbing the Republican Party. It's a calculated assault on the Constitution that transcends partisan politics and will come back to haunt all Americans.
Obama realizes that his egregious record in office has finally come home to roost and that in November, assuming things continue on their current course, his party is going to receive a shellacking at the polls because of him.
This is why he is willing to go to any lengths to distract attention from his failures. He figures the best way he can do that is by further vilifying Republicans as irresponsible extremists, racists, bigots, homophobes and the rest, hoping that he can dupe Americans into ignoring his disastrous record by convincing them that Republicans would be even worse.
He desperately needs to gin up his base and energize his own extremists, and his tried-and-true method for the past six years to accomplish that has been to use fear-mongering against Republicans.
So he is not only ratcheting up his rhetoric to accuse Republicans of a plot to impeach him, though House Speaker John Boehner has clearly indicated that is not in the cards, but also trying to force their hand into actually impeaching him. To this end, he is planning on upping the ante by issuing a far-reaching unilateral order granting amnesty to millions.
That's right. The leader of the Free World is trying to provoke Republicans into impeaching him or otherwise stirring a constitutional crisis.
This is stunningly unprecedented. But more and more people are wising up to his serial abuses of power and his partisan agitation.
I don't have a great track record as a prognosticator of elections, but I am strongly sensing his party, as a direct result of his policies and lawlessness and its shameless refusal to rein him in, is going to get a titanic comeuppance in November.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book, "Jesus on Trial: A Lawyer Affirms the Truth of the Gospel," will be released Sept. 8. Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
