Barack Obama is going to delay executive action until after the midterm elections. During an interview on “Meet the Press” Sunday, he openly admitted his purpose is to soften the blow at the polls for his beleaguered Democrat friends. Knowing this president, even this unabashedly cynical partisan stance on one of the more pressing issues facing the country today was hardly surprising, though it drew condemnation from both sides, if for different reasons.

“Today the president and the Senate Democrats have made it very clear that undocumented immigrants and Latinos are simply viewed as political pawns,” complained Eddie Carmona of PICO National Network, an amnesty advocacy group.

More accurately, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) observed, “[Obama’s] just saying he’ll go around the law once it’s too late for Americans to hold his party accountable in the November elections.” Precisely.

Obama promised earlier this year to whip out his mighty pen and craft an executive order to “fix” the illegal immigrant problem by the end of summer. There were few details at the time about how exactly he planned to do this, but the solution was most likely to land somewhere between conditional and unconditional amnesty for millions of illegals living in the U.S.

Obama was undeterred even after tens of thousands of children from Latin America rushed across the Southern border. Immigration quickly became a hot button issue once again until the Leftmedia grew bored reporting the story, and the children were scooped up and quietly distributed around the country.

Of course, the reason these children came – most of them sent by parents from countries across Latin America – was because of Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) order, which essentially served as a permission slip for more than 1.5 million illegal aliens who came as children with their parents. Word got out of this virtual amnesty and prompted more to come. Obama’s motivation then, as now, was that Republicans were obstructing his agenda. Lost on him was the fact that Republicans were reluctant to engage a president who could not be taken at his word and refused to engage in any constructive debate. In Obama’s world, anyone who disagrees with him is merely an obstacle to be overcome by whatever means available, which generally means shredding the Constitution.

Obama’s announcement Sunday to delay action on immigration came after pleas from Democrat Senators Mark Pryor, Jeanne Shaheen and Al Franken to delay action, fearing that voter backlash before November could swing the Senate to the Republicans. After all, holding seats is all that matters.

There was a time, though few seem to remember, when Republicans and Democrats staked their claim on either side of an issue, then hashed out a means of making legislation to address that issue. There were not always compromises, and sometimes one party or another took a shellacking. But that was politics and that was how the system worked. What we’re seeing now is a hyper-partisan president who has chosen to make an end run around the legal process to fulfill his own goals, most of which are tied to his ego and not the welfare of the country. His party is complicit in his unconstitutional actions because they hope to benefit politically. The good of the nation is of no consequence.