Charging into a heated and likely prolonged election-year fight with Republicans, President Barack Obama declared Saturday night he would seek to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Obama said a nomination was "bigger than any one party." Bigger than any one party? How about the separation of powers among the three branches of government?
This president has repeatedly and flagrantly ignored his constitutional limitations. He openly bullies with executive orders to raise taxes or regulate guns. He used an executive order to establish new immigration law when Congress refused to pass the law he wanted. (That case is now pending before the Supreme Court.)
He seeks restraints on political speech by overturning Supreme Court limitations on campaign finance laws; all this is reason enough to obstruct his ability to place yet another hardcore, anti-individual rights big-government leftist on the Supreme Court. If free speech ends in America, everything else will die along with it.
Leftists love to trot out the “race card.” But what about the guilt card? Obama is trying to lay a guilt trip on Republicans in Congress. His condescending statements insist that there are “bigger things” than politics and that there is such a thing as principles. Well, he’s right about that, but the question is, whose principles? Obama’s principles, of course. And if he even has them, they are completely on the side of massive government over the individual.
Politically speaking, the highest principle of all is the concept of individual rights, embodied by the Declaration of Independence. Practically speaking, the U.S. Constitution is what matters most. It matters because it protects and upholds the rights of the individual. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best thing human have devised since the beginning of time. Given Obama’s repeated and relentless attacks against our Constitution and our individual rights, why should we listen to him when he proselytizes about things “bigger” than politics?
Obama certainly didn’t act as if there were things bigger than politics when he rammed his Obamacare through Congress. Nor did he act as if there were things bigger than party when he shoved his nuclear giveaway to Iran down our throats - without Senate approval.
He deliberately, consistently, and ruthlessly acts against the separation of powers defined by the Constitution as the different branches of government. He was supposedly a constitutional law professor, which only serves to amplify his arrogance.
When he repeatedly acts in defiance of the legislative or judicial branches, he is in effect saying to the American people, “I don’t care about you. I’m the president.” In his self-centered and sanctimonious world, might makes right.
Will Obama’s guilt trip succeed? Some of our milquetoast Republicans such as Jeb Bush and John Kasich are already expressing regret about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s surprisingly strong stand to delay a vote on Justice Scalia’s replacement.
The compulsion of spineless cowards like Bush and Kasich to “go along to get along” is exactly what got Republicans where they are today. Even with their faults, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the only Republican candidates making any attempt to overthrow that dangerous mentality.
Obama said that it’s all about democracy and, "the institution to which Justice Scalia dedicated his professional life, and making sure it continues to function as the beacon of justice that our founders envisioned." Look at his record to see what he thinks of our founders: Obama has a lot of nerve talking about the “beacon of justice our founders created.” He has done more to overtly and defiantly snuff out that beacon than any president in the history of the United States.
All we can do is hope that Congress will, for once, do its job by obstructing the ability of this lame-duck president to shape the Supreme Court into his unconstitutionally socialist image. If Congress can do that, it will be the greatest contribution they can hope to make toward the preservation of that Constitution.
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