Boehner Surrenders - Call him Surrender Johnny & Surrender Johnny has taken the bait
https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net...54dededa456ab6 Mark Levin
Boehner and the Republicans defy the Constitution
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Boehner Surrenders: No Defense of the Constitution
December 2nd, 2014
Call him Surrender Johnny. And Surrender Johnny has taken the bait.
In spite of taking an oath of office that requires him to “solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States”, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives has taken the bait and surrendered. He will not defend the Constitution of the United States. Setting precedent for liberal presidents for decades to come.
So comes the news over in The Washington Times where news of the Boehner surrender of the rights of the legislative branch were headlined this way:
John Boehner gears up to shut GOP immigration dissenters down
Reported the Times:
House Speaker John Boehner has joined forces with key Republican leaders to shut down any GOP members who might want to strong-arm President Obama over immigration. Some in Congress on the Republican side would rather see a government shutdown than a White House with carte blanche to enact significant amnesty provisions via executive order, the New York Times reported.
Memo to Republican Congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois and Washington Republican lobbyist John Feehery: No, defending the Constitution of the United States is not bait. Not defending the Constitution is the bait - and you have swallowed it whole.
Memo to Republican Congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois and Washington Republican lobbyist John Feehery: No, defending the Constitution of the United States is not bait. Not defending the Constitution is the bait - and you have swallowed it whole.
Congressman Schock appeared on a Bloomberg show to say that President Obama’s unconstitutional executive order on amnesty is simply about Obama “trying to bait us into a showdown over a government shut down” and the GOP shouldn’t “take the bait.”
Congressman Schock, it should be noted here, has a Liberty Score rating from Conservative Review of “F”.
Schock is not alone in the GOP in siding with Surrender Johnny on the idea that defending the Constitution is “bait.” Over at The Christian Science Monitor, lobbyist and former Speaker Denny Hastert aide John Feehery takes the bait exactly as Obama and company want.
Writes Feehery:
Any move to defund Obama's executive order will fail in the Senate or produce a government shutdown that will be taken as a sign that Republicans can't govern. So, file a lawsuit, be smart, and win in 2016.
Feehery also frets:
I don’t know how we attract the same number of Hispanic voters if we have a sustained government shutdown fight over the president’s decision to allow more Hispanics to stay in the country.
The issue at hand with this executive order has nothing to do with Hispanics, with immigration or amnesty. It has nothing to do with Barack Obama. It has everything to do with defending the Constitution.
Are these guys serious? Is the Speaker of the House serious? Defending the constitutional obligations of the legislative branch is “bait”? And the issue is about “how we attract “ Hispanic voters? One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this kind of nonsense. This is standing the real issue on its head.
In fact, to believe this Obama executive order is about immigration and Hispanics - and that the response is to surrender - is exactly taking the bait. Obama has hoodwinked a bunch of Republican suckers.
Who died and left the Obama White House and the liberal media in charge of defining reality? The issue at hand with this executive order has nothing to do with Hispanics, with immigration or amnesty. It has nothing to do with Barack Obama. It has everything to do with defending the Constitution. It is little short of stunning that a sitting Republican Speaker of the House and other House Republicans along with a former top aide to another Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives are terrified at the thought of Congress actually doing it’s job and defending the Constitution.
So let’s say it again in case the point made in this space last week got swamped in the pre-Thanksgiving Ferguson tidal wave.
Sure - proceed with the lawsuit against Obama executive overreach. But step up to the plate and defund the presidency itself. Don’t want to touch the funding of the executive order on amnesty? Then don’t. Leave it standing while the suit proceeds. And don’t personalize the fight - don’t defund the chefs and butlers and ushers and maids that keep the physical White House running for the Obama family. Fund Air Force One - let him fly wherever he wants to go. And don’t touch the Secret Service.
Make the point by taking direct aim at the mechanisms that run the governmental institution of the presidency and the executive branch. In the Senate this means refusing to confirm any presidential nominees other than those nominated for national security positions.
But this is a monumental fight between the executive and legislative branches of government. Surrender is the absolute worst thing for Republicans to do. A price must be paid for what was done - a price so high no president will ever even think of doing it again.
Forget immigration. Make the point by taking direct aim at the mechanisms that run the governmental institution of the presidency and the executive branch. In the Senate this means refusing to confirm any presidential nominees other than those nominated for national security positions. Confirm Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s successor. But all other nominees for non-national security positions should be put on ice. On hold until the executive order is undone or Obama leaves office, whichever comes first.
Then start defunding the presidency itself - with a very sharp scalpel. Go into the budget for the Executive Office of the President. Defund the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, the Office of Presidential Personnel, the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, the White House Domestic Policy Council and the budgeting center of presidential power - the Office of Management and Budget. And all the rest of “Offices” and “Councils” the presidency needs to function - and there are several.
Move on through the Cabinet departments. Defund their version of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs - they all have one. Selectively zero in on the bureaucratic power centers of these departments and agencies. Targets could include the EPA’s Office of Administration and Resources Management (OARM) which “provides national leadership, policy, and management of many essential support functions for the Agency, including human resources management, acquisition activities (contracts), grants management, and management and protection of EPA’s facilities and other critical assets nationwide.” Or the Education Department’s Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development (OPEPD) which “serves as the principal adviser to the Secretary on all matters relating to policy development and review; performance measurement and evaluation; budget processes and proposals.”
Play hardball. Go after the executive power to make regulations. How? Defund the Federal Register - calling a halt to the publication of proposed and final rules issued by the various government bureaucracies. Without being published the government cannot legally make or enforce proposed rules and regulations all of which legally require a public comment period. Shutting off the funds brings this executive branch process to an abrupt halt.
The real problem here - and clearly the American people get the problem exactly - is the Inside the Beltway conventional wisdom that Boehner has come to personify. A conventional wisdom of surrender that is utterly out of touch with Americans living every day real life.
An example? Take this typical “wisdom” from the aforementioned Mr. Feehery in his column for the Monitor.
The president is not going to back down on this fight. Why should he? He’s not running again, and if the Republicans want to destroy their own brand, what does he care? Second, they think they can sustain a shutdown over the long haul. After all, there was no lasting damage done to the GOP brand during the last shutdown, as evidenced by the election results last Tuesday. At least, that’s what they say. But conservatives would be wrong to assume that the GOP brand has completely recovered from the shutdown. The approval rating for Republicans is still in the low 30’s, according to a Washington Post poll, a number that hasn’t moved much since October 2013.
The fact of the matter here is that the shutdown drew a bright red line to illustrate the difference between right and left - a tactic that Ronald Reagan repeatedly advocated and used when president.
Got that? In the world of Establishment Inside the Beltway Republicans like Mr. Feehery the actual election results - in which Republicans at the ballot box won their largest House majority since 1928, 86 years ago! - are meaningless. What counts is some poll from the Washington Post that says their approval rating “hasn’t moved much since October 2013.”
The fact of the matter here is that the shutdown drew a bright red line to illustrate the difference between right and left - a tactic that Ronald Reagan repeatedly advocated and used when president. The fight led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz was a spectacular Reagnesque success - and the GOP was amply rewarded for it. Only in Washington-world where polls count more than actual election results was it a loser. Which tells you all you need to know.
On the day members of Congress are sworn in they take the following oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Now? Before new members have even served a day? All of a sudden the Speaker of the House - a Republican Speaker of the House at that - is telling his colleagues to forget the whole “support and defend the Constitution” business? He sounds more Pelosi than Pelosi.
Speaker Boehner is making a huge mistake. Politically and institutionally. This is exactly what Margaret Thatcher used to call the “socialist ratchet.” Mr. Obama has turned the governmental ratchet far left by asserting a legislative power as his own - and the Speaker in response has raised an institutional white flag. Letting him get away with it.
Mistakes in government don’t come any bigger than this.
Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com
TAGS: Amnesty, Boehner
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