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I fear we are nearing the end of a well played out battle plan by Team Obama to fundamentally transform America permanently. Most of America watched silently as Conservatives screamed bloody murder. While I can’t say I specifically would apply this tactic if I were in their shoes, It has some merit to it. Frankly, it seems too old school and civil for Obama.
In the showdown over the shutdown of the U.S. government, the Obamaites tipped their hand yesterday as what their strategy is.Taking a page out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” the plan is to maximize the people’s pain — to maximize the political damage to the enemy, the Republican Party.
What else explains it?
Consider this: Asked Wednesday if there were any danger of America defaulting on her debt, President Obama rushed to assure a reporter that, yes, indeed, there certainly is such a peril.
Why would a president act in so perverse a manner, were he not trying deliberately to rattle or panic the markets?
Obama’s tactic worked. Thursday, the Dow plunged below 15,000.Equally telling is what happened at the World War II Memorial. This is an open memorial on the mall, to which the old soldiers of the Greatest Generation, flown here on honor flights, come to a last roll call with their comrades. The memorial is dedicated to them, to what they and their buddies did, and to those who never came home.
But when the old soldiers got here, the Park Service, apparently acting on orders from the White House complex, had thrown up steel barriers and crime-scene tape to keep them from visiting the site on what is surely the last trip many will ever make to see their memorial. What kind of sick mind does something like that?
To their credit, the vets and their families pulled aside the barriers to walk through their monument, singing songs in memory of the heroes who had gone before. Now, one reads that Obama has ordered the cemetery and beaches at Normandy closed. Again, what kind of mindset produces this?
Undeniably, Republicans have voted to defund Obamacare, to suspend it for one year, and to reform it. But in each of these three votes, the House also voted to fund the entire government. Why, then, is the government shut down? Because Harry Reid and Barack Obama have issued an edict: Either Obamacare is fully funded and untouched in the continuing resolution, or we kill the CR, shut down the government, and blame you.
And this is exactly what is going on.
This is all about a petulant president whose prize program the people do not want, but who insists it be imposed upon them, to assure himself a paragraph in the history books.
This week, Republicans tried to pass legislation that would keep open all memorials and monuments, all tourist sites in Washington, D.C., and all programs for America’s veterans.
Who stonewalled that? Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama.
Why would Reid sabotage the funding the National Institute of Health.
Why would Reid sabotage what is transparently a humanitarian act?
Again, Reid and Obama do not want to ease the pain of the people. They want to intensify that pain, ratchet it up, maximize it, to put maximum pressure on and do maximum damage to the GOP.
The Obama-Reid strategy is, in a word, sadistic.
They are inflicting pain on fellow Americans — to break their political enemies. And they can only succeed in sustaining their Big Lie — that it is Republicans who want to keep the government shut down — because of a collaborationist press.
Case in point: The Washington Post.
Several days ago, the Post wailed that Republicans were endangering the nation’s health by failing to fund NIH. But now that the Republican House has tried to fund NIH in full, where is the editorial denouncing Pelosi or Reid for blocking funding for NIH? Nowhere. Which suggests the Post’s real concern was never about funding NIH but about bashing the GOP.
In Thursday’s lead editorial: “National Security at Risk,” the Washington Post asks, “At a time of war, how can Republicans justify furloughing much of the intelligence workforce?”
Excellent question.
Yet, not a word in the editorial about the indispensable role of Reid and our commander-in-chief in preventing America’s security agencies from being funded. What should the House Republican do before week’s end? Pass bills funding the Pentagon, State, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security and any other agency having to do with the national security. But when Harry Reid again balks that he is not going to “play this little game,” anyone think the Post will hold him accountable?
The Obama-Reid strategy — inflict maximum pain on the country for maximum gain for themselves — coupled with a refusal to talk with the GOP — reflects this city’s contempt for conservative Republicans.
Yet, the sadistic strategy of Obama and Reid, and the poisonous atmosphere it has created, is telling America that: In its assessment of this city’s ruling establishment, the Tea Party has more than a small point.
Yet, with Reid now on the defensive, trying to justify his refusal to cooperate in funding any agency, the truth may be gaining on the Big Lie.
“The power of the purse” plays a critical role in the relationship of the United States Congress and the President of the United States, and has been the main historic tool by which Congress can limit executive power. One of the most recent examples is the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which eliminated all military funding for the government of South Vietnam and thereby ended the Vietnam War. Other recent examples include limitations on military funding placed on Ronald Reagan by Congress, which led to the withdrawal of United States Marines from Lebanon.
Appropriation bills cannot originate in the Senate, but the Senate can amend appropriation bills that originate in the House.The power of the purse in military affairs was famously subverted during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. Congress denied further aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. Unwilling to accept the will of Congress, members of the Reagan Administration solicited private donations, set up elaborate corporate schemes and brokered illegal arms deals with Iran in order to generate unofficial funds that could not be regulated by Congress.
Presently, budget limitations and using the power of the purse form a controversial part of discussion regarding Congressional opposition to the Iraq War. On March 23, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a supplemental war budget that imposed a timeline on the presence of American combat troops in Iraq, but the legislation was not passed.
The power of the purse has also been used to compel the U.S. states to pass laws, in cases where Congress does not have the desire or constitutional power to make it a federal matter. The most well-known example of this is regarding the drinking age, where Congress passed a law to withhold federal funds for highways in any state that did not raise the age to 21. Congress was not allowed to pass the law itself because the 21st Amendment (which ended Prohibition in the U.S.) gave control of alcohol to the states. In 2009, Congress considered similar legislation regarding texting while driving.
Mark Levin said on his show the other day, “Please stick with me on this one, nothing could be more important regarding our nation and Constitution. (no hyperbole) As I mentioned yesterday, the president is saying with increasing frequency that he will not allow a “default” on the debt. I explained yesterday why this is not true based upon the revenue the federal government receives every month. What I and others fear is that the president is laying the predicate for a constitutional confrontation with congress. He is being urged by psuedo intellectual economists and “legal experts” to use, I say abuse, the 14th Amendment and unilaterally raise the debt limit without congressional approval.
One of the tactics being used in support of this strategy is to conflate congressional “appropriation” with “authorization.” They are not the same thing. If the president follows through on his threat to do this it will plunge the nation into a constitutional crisis the likes of which we have not seen since the 1850s. He will set the precedent that Congress is superfluous and impotent, a sentiment first suggested by President Woodrow Wilson. This will happen in 13 days unless the Republicans in the House cave to the president’s demand that he get 100% of what he wants.”
That would likely signify the effective end of one of the three co-equal branches of government and usher in the Dictatorship former Supreme Court Justices have warned us about.
In his 10/3/13 broadcast, Mark Levin warns that, based upon Obama’s inflammatory rhetoric regarding the debt ceiling, and the supposedly impending “default” on our debt, that Obama plans on acting unilaterally to over-spend the debt limit. Mark correlates a couple of facts. The first is that Obama is harping on “default.” Most pundits are reading this as a means of “talking down” the economy, in order to blame the “Republican shutdown” for a weakening economy.
But Mark believes that Obama is laying the groundwork for overspending the debt limit, saying that while Congress has the authority to authorize expenditures, the president can spend money regardless. (I’m paraphrasing to the best of my ability, but if someone could clarify the mechanisms involved, I’d appreciate it.
Additionally, Obama’s Treasury Secretary is harping on the fact that there is little left that he can do to pay our national debt, leaving no alternative to raising the debt ceiling.
Obviously, this would be an impeachable offense, but the Senate will not convict, so Obama has nothing to fear there. If Obama follows through, who will stop him?
Regardless, the point may be moot, because from what I’ve heard elsewhere, Boehner is already indicating that he will cave on the debt ceiling. He has stated that he is willing to violate the “Hastert rule,” and bring a vote that the majority of Republicans reject.
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