So why didn't the GOP oppose Obama's "unconstitutional tyranny" in cromnibus? by @DavidOAtkins

So why didn't the GOP oppose Obama's "unconstitutional tyranny" in the cromnibus?

by David Atkins

Greg Sargent made a good point yesterday: either it's tyranny or it isn't.

But conservatives are right: If you take at face value House GOP leaders’ own lurid depictions of Obama’s action as a dire Constitutional threat, they are basically rolling over in the face of it. Indeed, if they don’t exercise maximum resistance now, barring a lucky break in the courts later, there may be little they can do to stop it.

Your own interpretation of the reason Boehner and crew chose not to include brinksmanship over immigration may vary. They may have simply wished to avert a shutdown, knowing that Obama would veto anything that defied his immigration order. Or Boehner may be kowtowing to big business interests that actually support bringing immigrants out of the shadows. Or he and the rest of the leadership may be acknowledging that the GOP is a party without a future if it keeps poking Latinos in the eye.

But one would think that a party that had just won an election overwhelmingly and actually believed that the President had flagrantly violated the Constitution in a tyrannical matter would do something about it in the first big budget fight immediately following said offenses.

Unless it's all just hot air designed to whip up their xenophobic base. That's also a possibility. In which case, the base would be fully justified in taking the leadership to the woodshed for perfidy, exaggeration or both.


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