So insists Representative Matt Salmon (R-AZ5), more than a little naively:
Republicans have a responsibility to the American people to pass a spending bill that would block funding for anything involving executive amnesty, Arizona-5 Representative Matt Salmon said Friday on Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
Agreed, Congressman. But not quite for the reason you think.
"It will stop him dead in his tracks if our conference decides to put on the spending bill that the president has to have by the end of the year that no money in that spending bill can go for these purposes, for this executive amnesty. If he does that, he's in direct violation of the law," Salmon said.
Congressman, Barack Obama has violated so many federal laws by now that I don't think you or I could accurately tally them all. Violating the law is in his re-written job description. Hell, it's in his DNA. He can't breathe if he isn't violating a law. And never lose sight of why: He's a "god". He's the "law-giver," the "light-bringer". He answers to no one, least of all mere "mortals" like us. Laws don't come from the bottom-up to hold leaders in line (unless they're Republicans, of course); they trickle from the top-down, to control the lumpenproletariat. "For our own good," of course, because we can't be trusted with such "dangerous," "anarchistic" concepts as freedom and self-determination, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and any other such "right-wing extremism" that might conceivably emerge from the former U.S. Constitution.
Barack Obama is, to condense him down to his essence, a communist megalomaniac surrounded by sychophantic psychopaths, not one of whom will ever even be inclined, much less likely, to do for him what Senator Barry Goldwater once did for President Richard Nixon in early August of 1974, when he was about to be impeached: Drag him into political reality. Goldwater told Nixon that in the event of a Senate trial, Nixon could count on fifteen acquittal votes at most. He was going down. The only choice left was whether he would resign and bow out with some measure of grace and dignity, or go down fighting, even further riven the country and leave it in leaderless chaos at the height of the Cold War. Tricky Dick, whatever else he may have been, was a patriot, and finally did what had to be done.
Red Barry is no Tricky Dick, Congressman Salmon. He doesn't care about the law, he doesn't care about your conference, he doesn't care what any of us think. He's going to shove amnesty down our throats and turn every "red" State "blue" by any means necessary, and no funding restriction House Republicans put on him will "stop him cold," or even slow him down.
Or will even make it out of the lame-duck Donk Senate, for that matter.
But stopping O's illegal amnesty decree isn't the immediate objective, as Congressman Salmon begins reasoning his way toward next:
"We have a responsibility to put forward our views on how the government should be funded as conservatives. The founding fathers gave us the power of the purse just for moments like this. The president has the veto and we have the power of the purse. If our appropriators include that language in the bill, the president will be forbidden from using any money. He can do whatever executive order he wants, he just won't have the money to implement it." [emphasis added]
He will then steal the money from somewhere else and illegally implement it anyway. But by doing so at a time of such public visibility - or, if you prefer, inadvertent (heh) transparency - it will make his un-American despotism even more obvious to LIVs and NIVs, further erode any political capital and credibility he has left, further damage the Democrat "brand," and correspondingly empower the incoming GOP Congress toward what is the big picture endgame of this process, of which Executive amnesty is but a stepping-stone: impeachment. The same fate as Richard Nixon, only orders of magnitude more deserved.
The difference, of course, being that The One will not, nor will he ever, "bow out with some measure of grace and dignity." Mainly because no Senate Democrat would ever vote to convict him, but even if they did, he would simply barricade himself in the White House and refuse to leave. Which I believe he's going to defiantly do in any case, as it happens; either way, a catastrophic constitutional crisis is more or less inevitable. But then, a catastrophic constitutional crisis was more or less inevitable from the moment John McCain conceded on Election night six years ago, so why should Republicans not go down fighting?
To quote Wolverine in that northern Canadian tavern, "Funny you should ask":
Republicans in the House appear split on how to respond to President Barack Obama's anticipated executive action on immigration, which could come as early as next week.
According to the Washington Post, the leadership is rejecting cries to shut down the government again and is intent on a strategy that would deal with its enactment in the months ahead by making incremental changes to the law.
A year ago I would have been on board with that. Why? Two reasons: (1) the law at issue - then, it was ObamaCare - had already been shoved down our throats years before; and (2) the GOP, only controlling the House, lacked the political power to defund it under the strategy upon which Senator Ted Cruz was insisting. Had the GOP passed a short-term continuing resolution and deferred the confrontation until after ObamaCare implementation began, moving it from the realm of abstraction to kitchen table reality, public support for a government shutdown to try and restore their health care plans would have been there, and the political power to go toe-to-toe with the White House along with it.
But now? It's a completely different set of circumstances. (1) The "law" at issue isn't a law, it's a threatened illegal Executive decree; (2) this past summer's Border Crisis has already made the implications of amnesty a stark reality; and (3) three-quarters of the voting public are already emphatically on the GOP's side in this showdown. Hell, it's much of what fueled Republicans' landslide midterm election triumph a week and a half ago.
"Incremental changes to the law in the months ahead" are not only wholly inadequate and ineffective, but they miss the core point: Barack Obama is shoving amnesty down our throats right now. Not "in the months ahead," but now. And now is when it has to be stopped - not by nibbling around the edges after the fact, but by a direct confrontation using the legal powers the Constitution gives to what is supposed to be the preeminent branch of the federal government: Congress and its power of the purse. Because he isn't giving us any other choice.
If my Tea Party friends want to employ the term "gutlessness" about the House GOP leadership at this point, feel free to do so. I, as is my want, am simply being practical, just as I was a year ago.
As a matter of fact, I would resist the phrase "cries to shut down the government again". Strictly speaking, a year ago it was Harry (G)Reid who shut down the government by refusing to cooperate with or even compromise on defunding ObamaCare implementation. And that was over a policy difference; in this case, House Republicans would simply be declining to fund a blatantly illegal presidential power grab toward a hugely unpopular policy objective. If Red Barry and Dirty Harry want to shut down the government (again) over something so ruinous to their party's political "brand" and future electoral prospects, we should welcome that prospect.
As Congressman Salmon, evidently, does....not?:
In a later appearance Friday on "MidPoint," Salmon told host Ed Berliner that he is not threatening a repeat of a government shutdown in order to de-fund amnesty.
"Nobody is pursing any kind of shutdown," he said, insisting it's "just the media" whipping up government-shutdown talk in response to his efforts.
I'd like to think that Congressman Salmon isn't that naïve. Recall the additional reason why Barack Obama is lunging for Executive amnesty now: He's still got a Democrat Senate to run interference for him for another eight weeks. The same power realities that defeated Republicans in last year's shutdown showdown are still in place until January 9th. We can't expect O and (G)Reid not to take full advantage of them. Which, if Congressman Salmon is serious, makes another government shutdown inevitable.
To which I say, as John Kerry did in the 2004 campaign, "Bring...it...on". You could almost say that this is precisely what the voters elected a GOP Congress to do.
And remember, my fellow Pachyderms: The political throats you'll be saving are your own.
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