In Brief: Democrats ‘Terminate’ the Constitution All the Time
They’re supposedly aghast that Donald Trump would say what he said, but they’re appalling hypocrites.
Donald Trump said bad things about the 2020 election and “termination” of parts of the U.S. Constitution over the weekend. Democrats and their allies in the press immediately squalled from the fainting couch about his outrageous statements (and they were outrageous). But the hypocrisy is astounding, and political analyst Matt Margolis has the receipts.
It was a bit surprising to see various Democrats speak out and defend the Constitution. In a way, it was actually refreshing, because typically they couldn’t care less about the Constitution except to see it as an obstacle in their quest for absolute power. During the Obama presidency, the Constitution was routinely “terminated” so that he could impose his agenda. …
When Congress couldn’t pass the DREAM Act, Barack Obama used an executive order to create DACA, which is a version of the DREAM Act that is run by the executive branch. Obama changed U.S. immigration law with the stroke of a pen to make his supporters happy. He had already acknowledged multiple times that he didn’t have the Constitutional authority to make immigration law on his own.
Democrats didn’t object. …
Even Obama’s signature legislative achievement, Obamacare, became an abuse of his constitutional authority. As complaints about the law mounted, Obama began making executive adjustments to the law without consulting lawmakers. According to Eugene Kontorovich, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University School of Law, Obama’s fixes exceeded “the president’s discretion in implementing the law.” The president has no constitutional authority to rewrite or unbundle laws, especially to impose new obligations on people. UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo said that Obama’s fixes amounted to “a suspension power that the Framers consciously rejected.”
Democrats didn’t object.
Margolis points to other examples because they’re frankly pretty easy to find. Democrats “terminate” the Constitution all the time if it stands in the way of whatever they want to do. He concludes:
Because Democrats stood idly by as Barack Obama repeatedly exceeded his constitutional authority, it was easy for Joe Biden to follow suit upon taking office. Biden went all-in on DACA. He made illegal executive fixes to Obamacare. He also reinterpreted Title IX to include “gender identity.” And Biden created his student loan forgiveness plan via executive action despite knowing he had no constitutional authority to do so.
Democrats can pretend to be horrified by Trump’s remarks (which were legitimately horrible) about the Constitution all they want, but they have long been complicit in their own party’s termination of the Constitution when it suits their political agenda.
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- Matt Margolis
