If you think about it, Obama has Congressional Republicans — who vow to “fight” his unilateral action making current illegal immigrants legal citizens — right where he wants them.
For an explanation, conmpare and contrast Obama’s attitudes and actions with those of a criminal personality as defined by Stanton Samenow in his classic book, “Inside the Criminal Mind” (a new edition has just been released.)
According to criminologist Samenow, a criminal rationalizes and excuses all his actions. Obama does that when he says, in effect, it would not be the right thing to send newly declared citizens back to their home countries. He’s evading the point here of whether he has the power to make them citizens without a change in existing immigration law. One can only assume he doesn’t care about the law — at least not when it applies to him.
Like a criminal, Obama also makes himself out to be the victim. He essentially says, “Well, I waited six years and these Republicans in Congress won’t pass a bill.” So he makes up the law himself. He doesn’t care about the law when it’s inconvenient. Neither does a criminal. When the law does support something he likes — such as requiring people to purchase health insurance, or to forbid people from buying a gun for self-protection — then his attitude about the law completely changes. Criminals, like Obama, are not absolutely and always lawless. They only dislike the law when it applies to them or inconveniences them in some way.
Like a criminal, Obama also says, in effect, “Others do it too.” He’s trying to claim that previous Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush did the same thing. But if you research those cases more carefully, you’ll find that those Presidents took action in marginal cases in what they considered interpretation of the law. In 1986, President Reagan felt obliged to sign an immigration law in order to take executive action. Obama makes no such claim, nor could he credibly do so. Legally speaking, he is using an executive order to declare that a law already in effect at the time immigrants illegally entered the country no longer applies. Why? Because he says so.
Why do I say Obama has Republicans where he wants them? Because the only way to rationally and credibly respond is to treat his actions as criminal. This means, at a minimum, setting the stage for a trial, in the form of impeachment proceedings. They won’t do this. They fear losing power, they fear making people angry, and they fear rocking the boat in any way. Right now Republican Congressional leaders may bluster about Obama’s “lawlessness” or “my way or the highway” approach. They might talk of suing him or defunding some government program required to implement Obama’s proclamation. But experience tells us they won’t even take these steps. If government “shuts down” even for five minutes, the blame will be placed on Republicans, and Obama will — yet again — get to play the victim, just as all criminals and rationalizers of unjustified actions do.
America is a nation of immigrants, and the issue here is not immigration. The issue here is whether our Constitutional system of government, complete with three branches of government designed to check and balance each other in defense of individual rights, is to sustain itself or die out. Criminal personalities like Obama are good at transferring the blame and responsibility for their actions. If you oppose his blatantly illegal behavior, then his supporters will call you — of course — “racist” and against immigration. But the whole reason immigrants are coming to this country in the first place is for the freedom (relative to the rest of the world, at least) it still offers individual citizens. It does these illegal-immigrants-transformed-into-citizens no good, either, if we sacrifice the remnants of our republican system of government and replace it with a one-man dictatorship.
The question now isn’t what Republicans do next. They aren’t willing to challenge Obama on fundamental principle, because this would require calling him, and treating him as, a criminal on trial.
The thing to look at now is: What will Obama, with his new-found and self-created authority, do next?
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