VDH:
Donald Trump’s supporters see a potential Hillary Clinton victory in November as the end of any conservative chance to restore small government, constitutional protections, fiscal sanity and personal liberty.
Clinton’s progressives swear that a Trump victory would spell the implosion of America as they know it, alleging Trump parallels with every dictator from Josef Stalin to Adolf Hitler.
Part of the frenzy over 2016 as a make-or-break election is because a closely divided Senate’s future may hinge on the coattails of the presidential winner. An aging Supreme Court may also translate into perhaps three to four court picks for the next president.
Yet such considerations only partly explain the current election frenzy.
The model of the imperial Obama presidency is the greater fear. Over the last eight years, Obama has transformed the powers of the presidency in a way not seen in decades.
Get instant access to exclusive stock lists and powerful tools on Investors.com. Try us free for 4 weeks.
Congress talks grandly of “comprehensive immigration reform,” but Obama, as he promised with his pen and phone, bypassed the House and Senate to virtually open the border with Mexico. He issued executive-order amnesties. And he allowed entire cities to be exempt from federal immigration law.The press said nothing about this extraordinary overreach of presidential power, mainly because these largely illegal means were used to achieve the progressive ends favored by many journalists.
The Senate used to ratify treaties. In the past, a president could not unilaterally approve the Treaty of Versailles, enroll the United States in the League of Nations, fight in Vietnam or Iraq without congressional authorization, change existing laws by non-enforcement, or rewrite bankruptcy laws.
Not now. Obama set a precedent that he did not need Senate ratification to make a landmark treaty with Iran on nuclear enrichment.
He picked and chose which elements of the Affordable Care Act would be enforced — predicated on his 2012 re-election efforts.
Rebuffed by Congress, Obama is now slowly shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center by insidiously having inmates sent to other countries.
Respective opponents of both Trump and Clinton should be worried.
Either winner could follow the precedent of allowing any sanctuary city or state in the United States to be immune from any federal law found displeasing — from the liberal Endangered Species Act and federal gun registration laws to conservative abortion restrictions.
Could anyone complain if Trump’s secretary of state were investigated by Trump’s attorney general for lying about a private email server — in the manner of Clinton being investigated by Loretta Lynch?
Would anyone object should a President Trump agree to a treaty with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the same way that Obama overrode Congress with the Iran deal?
If a President Clinton decides to strike North Korea, would she really need congressional authorization, considering Obama’s unauthorized Libyan bombing mission?
What would Americans say if President Trump’s IRS — mirror-imaging Lois Lerner — hounded the progressive nonprofit organizations of George Soros?
Obama is’nt a president he is a Dictator and Despot as well as a Tyrant THROW THE SCOUNDREL OUT OF AMERICA
If elected, hopefully Trump could provoke some challenges to this authority by enacting some of the policies proposed. Allow abortions to be banned in some city. Allow some favored business to forgo paying taxes. Make a blanket approval of CHL’s all across Illinois. Then see what the inevitable challenges would establish in the way of precedent.
This would be a worthy domestic agenda.