There is a fascinating political shift occurring in Washington this weekend after President Barack Obama walked back from this pledge to act by the end of summer on his unilateral immigration actions and said that he will now wait until after the elections. The move has been openly discussed as an effort to support struggling Democratic candidates who are facing huge opposition to the immigration proposals and are leery of the President taking any action given his own record low polling numbers (which now stand at 38 percent according to Gallup). Various Democratic candidates have been complaining that they are losing ground due to the immigration proposal and that Obama’s pledge could further worsen the currently bleak picture for losses in Congress (and possibly losing both houses to the GOP). While the White House originally saw the proposal as a no-lose proposition and popular with the base, it has proven far less popular around the country, particularly in battleground states. Polls show far greater opposition than support for the proposal. Immigration advocates are denouncing the delay as putting “politics over people.”
The thrust of the decision is that the changes will be made but not until after voters are no longer able to express their opposition in the upcoming elections. That would seem to be a highly insulting proposition for voters, but it has not been treated as anything other than politics as usual by the media. It is a curious approach for a President who ran on the change slogan like “Time for A Change” and “Change You Can Believe In.” It is a “change you can count on [but not vote on]” approach to politics.
Two White House officials said that the move was meant to insulate Democrats from the public backlash to the immigration moves. This is in sharp contrast to the June 30th Rose Garden speech where Obama declared that he had directed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to give him recommendations for executive action by the end of summer and that he would “adopt those recommendations without further delay.”
My views on unilateral presidential action are well known and have little to due to the merits of these issues (Indeed, I agree with some of the President’s policies and objectives). However, what continues to amaze me is the character of modern American politics. Here you have politicians openly discussing how to avoid voter wrath by withholding action in a major area. In reality, I think some GOP leaders are doing the same thing in light of the recent defeat of Cantor and the clear success of new candidates running against the immigration proposals (while the Chamber of Congress and industry interests are pressuring for legalization as beneficial to business). I simply find it remarkable that politicians can get away with openly withholding proposals to evade a public backlash but promising that, as soon as the voters go home, they will move on the proposals. It strikes me as a tad duplicitous, but then again little makes sense to me in American politics anymore.
Source: AP
Thomas Jefferson was diametrically opposed to massive, overnight immigration from the Third World, including Mexico, so massive it produced unconstitutional and antithetical “amnesties” and faux “asylum,” in a very short period of time, producing environmental, wage, cultural and governance problems adverse to the “welfare of the receiving nations.”
No President should ever play golf. Nor should he or she play politics with immigration. Don’t give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. Oh, send us some doctors because we don’t graduate enough in North Carolina because we put all the resources into college sports and phys ed majors. Oh, send us some migrants workers to pick all the fruit in California. God knows that there are a lot of fruits out there. Republicans are for that but they are silent on the issue. As for the mid term elections no one needs to vote. Let the Republicans take over the Senate. Then what you citizens can do is take your money out of the stock market or be dumb. Remember what the other Justice Oliver Wendell Holms said back in 1927: “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” He might have used the idiot word instead of imbeciles. He did not say “retard”. That would be uncivil for a Supreme Court Justice. Remember this: the DOW was at 9600 when Bushie left office. It is over 17,000 now. Oh, don’t give Obama any credit. No. And he got us out of a recession caused by the idjit from Midland, TX. But next time send us Jeb. Would that be three generations or does he count as Georgie’s generation? I guess he does. So, we can not argue for sterilizing the electorate. Vote for Dog.
Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
31. Immigration Policy
“The first consideration in immigration is the welfare of the receiving nation. In a new government based on principles unfamiliar to the rest of the world and resting on the sentiments of the people themselves,
********************** *********************
the influx of a large number of new immigrants unaccustomed to the government of a free society
could be detrimental to that society.
Immigration, therefore, must be approached carefully and cautiously.”
Too Rapid Growth by Immigration
“Is rapid population growth by as great importations of foreigners as possible… founded in good policy?… They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.
These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children.
In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation.
They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass…
If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements.”
–Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.VIII, 1782. ME 2:118
It strikes me as a tad duplicitous[…]
Ha ha ha ha ha. A tad indeed. The masks are falling off. Without such amazing complicity on the part of the main stream media, it would never work. But work it does and that fact alone is breath taking.
Dredd,
How ’bout Duckman’s kill er convert’em-all…
Yikes! indeed!
Does anyone believe the current state of our political system is fixable? To my mind fixing it would require an educated electorate that is willing to forego self interest for the overall good of the country OR a benevolent king. I don’t see the former ever happening and while more likely, I don’t think we’ve slipped near far enough into chaos for the latter (and I wouldn’t take bets he’ll be benevolent). I see the outlook near term as more of the same but different, i.e., ever worse… And who sees the world as being a better place in any respect? What are the remedies? And if known how would we ever achieve a world consensus?
Yikes!
The children of ISIS are invading and Obama is out golfing.
Yikes!
Reds unite!
/snark
One would think that if a topic was so unpopular to the voters and that they might exact their feelings in the next election making some politician’s careers short, that there would be no adoption of such policy after the elections.
But since that has been thwarted it is apparent that politicians are acting outside of the public’s interest. That should be what a representative democracy represents. We are losing the battle at our own expense by voting in this caliber of politician.
The change we got was a toughening up of the previous administrations Patriot Act. We got real change dating back to 9/11 and really starting with the Patriot Act and the war in Afghanistan, followed by Iraq, all very deja vu Vietnam. Not just a case of lessons not learned but much worse. In short, the changes were all for the worse, even with the economy. He taught us that no matter what comes out of his mouth he does not give a damn about the people and soldiers are there to fight and die or go home and shut up. In short its more like 1984 than its ever been, more wars, more terrorism, less reason. About the only way this president could do any good would to be kidnapped and held to ransom by the good guys.
* shortcomings
jonathanturley: “It strikes me as a tad duplicitous, but then again little makes sense to me in American politics anymore.”
President Obama was initially elected to the White House in 2008 largely owing to the Democrats’ adoption of a brazenly false narrative about the Iraq mission – despite the decade-plus, front-page, headline-news history of the US-led Gulf War ceasefire enforcement and that primary sources, easily accessed on-line, clearly show OIF was right on the law and justified on the policy.
Since the Democrats and Obama were highly rewarded by what should have been an obvious, summarily debunked lie about the Iraq mission, it’s reasonable for them to have continued using openly, even crudely cynical political strategies. Simply, it’s working for them seemingly impervious (so far) to the shortcoming of Obama’s presidency.
Justice Holmes: “the US needs to stay out of it!”
Too late. The US has been involved in the Syria conflict, just not in any effective, constructive way. Obama’s approach thus far to Syria may have even deliberately strengthened ISIS and other Islamist factions as ‘proxy’ anti-Assad forces in a sort of anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen redux.
From an August 2013 WH briefing in reaction to the CW incident in Syria:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/background-briefing-senior-administration-officials-syria
From what I gather, the only Syria intervention option added to the table for ISIS in Syria is targeted assassination airstrikes such as we’ve employed in Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.
A point of interest is Obama severely stretched the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ international legal theory in the Libya regime change. The larger humanitarian crisis of the Syria conflict seems tailor-made for the humanitarian R2P theory; however, I haven’t seen the Obama admin raise the R2P justification for Syria.
For ISIS in Iraq, Obama seems to be moving towards an OEF I redux. However, Obama officials are claiming so far there will be no larger return to Iraq of US boots on the ground, which is interesting since OEF I employed a significant US footprint, albeit a relatively light Special Forces footprint. Perhaps the US forces already assigned to Iraq are enough for at least the v1.0 plan. Perhaps Obama will attempt to horsetrade with other nations to provide coalition boots on the ground as needed. We’ll see.
anonymous ~
Thanks for the rutherford link.
Promises, Promises…
Tip O’Neill is famously quoted as saying “All politics is local”. While it was intended to highlight the importance federal politicians should place on listening to their constituents, their constituents however seem to have taken that to mean only local politics matter; all the while those they send to Washington, D.C. remain unattended.
“There are a few instances where federal government has strengthened freedom – the civil rights fight, is one such example – but nearly every other intrusion, including the militarization of local police forces, shows us that the inclination of Washington is anything but libertarian.”
http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/04/actually-the-greatest-threat-to-our-liberty-is-federal-government-run-amok/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=336e8a709a-RSS_DAILY_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-336e8a709a-79248369
The duopoly treats us voters like slaves. We need to have an election where every incumbent is voted out and then get some 3rd, 4th parties formed. There’s an interesting independent running in Kansas US Senate race against Pat Roberts. Good piece in the Daily Beast today on it.
“Duplicity” is but one facet of extant, pervasive corruption and “little makes sense” because little remains of the American thesis. America has three legislative branches which engage in de Tocqueville’s corrupt “bribery” through redistribution. The literal Preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights have been violated and nullified.
The American thesis of replacing the monarchy with capable, rational, ethical and moral representatives through restricted vote was nullified long ago. The principles of individual freedom, economic freedom and severely limited government were replaced with decadent “one man, one vote” “bribery” through collectivism.
The discipline has been lost. The beauty of the American Revolution has been lost to chaos. The singular axiomatic resolution to the historical question of governance has been destroyed by the profligate greed fed by
de Tocqueville’s “bribery.”
Rational and disciplined governance can only be derived through the application of criteria to the vote. Without criteria, chaos results in manipulation.
The inmates have taken over the asylum.
******************************************************************************************
America was established as a representative republic elected by restricted vote.
-1776 Only people who own land can vote Declaration of Independence signed. Right to vote during the Colonial and Revolutionary periods is restricted to property owners—most of whom are over the age of 21.
-1787 Voting remains in the hands of landowners.
-1789 George Washington elected president. Only 6% of the population can vote.
*****************************************************************************************
Alexis de Tocqueville admonished against imposition of the decadent collectivist “one man, one vote” democracy.
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
Glen, Omaha steaks, LOL! I got a great Omaha Steaks gift box from a nice women in Chicago. Her cute little son had sprayed silicone tire cleaner on the floor in a Target. The little kid was fastidious and thought he was going to clean the dirty floor like he helps mom @ home. I walk around the corner and BAM, I’m on my ass w/o having a clue what happened, I went down that fast. Customers and staff come over to try and help and they’re falling. It looked like a 3 Stooges scene. Anyway, the mom sent me a big box of Omaha Steaks. A buddy of mine said, “She had you pegged as a carnivore.”
Chicago politician. Nothing really more needs to be said. More corrupt than Nixon and more incompetent than Carter. We’ll be paying for this mistake for decades.