Legally, President Obama has reiterated the principle
that he can pick and choose which U.S. laws he wishes to enforce (see his
decision to reverse the order of the Chrysler creditors, his decision not to
enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, and his administration’s contempt for
national-security confidentiality and Senate and House subpoenas to the
attorney general).
If one individual can decide to exempt nearly a million
residents from the law — when he most certainly could not get the law amended
or repealed through proper legislative or judicial action — then what can he
not do?
Obama is turning out to be the most subversive chief executive in terms of eroding U.S. law since Richard Nixon.
Politically, Obama calculates that some polls showing the
current likely Hispanic support for him in the high 50s or low 60s would not
provide enough of a margin in critical states such as Nevada, New Mexico, and
Colorado, or perhaps also in Florida and Virginia, to counteract the growing
slippage of the independent vote and the energy of the clinger/tea-party
activists. Thus, what was not legal or advisable in 2009, 2010, or 2011,
suddenly has become critical in mid-2012.
No doubt free green cards will quickly lead to
citizenship and a million new voters.
Will it work politically?
Obama must assume lots of things: that all Hispanics vote
as a block in favoring exempting more illegal aliens from the law, and are
without worry that the high unemployment rate hits their community among the
hardest; that black voters, stung by his gay-marriage stance, will not resent
what may be seen as de facto amnesty, possibly endangering his tiny (and
slipping) lead in places like Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; and, because
polls show overwhelming resistance to non-enforcement of immigration law, Obama
also figures that the minority who supports his recent action does so far more
vehemently than the majority who opposes it.
Time will tell; but my gut feeling is that his brazen act
will enrage far more than it will delight — and for a variety of different
reasons.
As with all his special-interest efforts — the Keystone
cancellation, war-on-women ploy, gay-marriage turnabout, and now de facto
amnesty — Obama believes dividing Americans along class, ethnic, gender, and
cultural lines will result in a cobbled together majority, far more preferable
than a 1996 Clinton-like effort to win over the independents by forging a bipartisan consensus.
Economically, why would we formalize nearly a million new
legally authorized workers when unemployment is approaching its 41st
consecutive month over 8% — especially when Democrats used to label 5.4% unemployment
as a “jobless recovery?”
Here in California, the slowing of illegal immigration,
due mostly to the fence and tough times, has led to steep wage hikes for
entry-level and farm labor, and given a little more clout to Americans in
so-called unskilled-labor fields.
(In other words, it really is true that the real
beneficiaries of border enforcement are low-paid Hispanic-Americans and
African-Americans who become more valued when they are not competing with
virtually unlimited numbers of illegal-alien workers.)
When you collate this recent act with the class-warfare
rhetoric, the “punish our enemies” threats, the president’s and Eric Holder’s
serial racialist statements, the huge borrowing, the national-security leaks,
the takeover of health care, the push for redistributive taxes, and even the
trivial appointments like a Van Jones, Anita Dunn, or Armendariz, you can
fairly conclude that Obama most certainly did not like the way the United
States operated for the last 30 or so years, and has tried his best, through
hook or crook, to change America in ways that simply were not possible through
legislative or even judicial action.
Give the president credit. He has thrown down the
gauntlet and essentially boasted: This is my vision of the way the new America
should work — and if you don’t like it, try stopping me in November - if you
dare.
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