King Obama's One Man Show

Obama – How to Turn a Democracy Into a Dictatorship in Three Easy Lessons

The View from the Middle

Back in 2009 when President Obama and the Democrats controlled both houses of congress and the executive branch, he had a couple of choices on how to govern.  He could embrace his own words, “there’s no blue America and no red America” and reach across the aisle to pass legislation with bi-partisan support.  But, he chose to tell the minority party to go to hell, by passing the most pervasive legislation since Social Security (ObamaCare) without a single Republican vote.

But it gets even worse.  When Scott Brown was elected to take Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts, it broke the Democrats filibuster proof majority in the Senate.  Instead of collaborating to get just one Republican vote, Harry Reid (I’m sure with the President’s blessing) changed the intent of the reconciliation process and passed ObamaCare in the Senate with a simple majority vote.  Lesson one, abuse your opponents when you have the chance.

Then, when he and the Democrats lost the majority in the House of Representatives, Mr. Obama declared, “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone”, implying that he would basically bypass Congress altogether and run the country through executive orders.  This was a slap in the face of every American who had just voted to put Republicans in control of the House and to bring some balance to our government.

In 2014, the country voted to not only increase Republican control in the House, but also to give them the majority in the Senate.  You would think that the President would take this shellacking as a hint that the country wanted him to work with conservatives and create legislation that both parties could support.  Silly you!  This just forced him to create a new strategy to elevate his wishes above Congress and the American people.

His new strategy is called “The Veto Threat”, and the Iran deal is a prime example.  Both houses of Congress will almost certainly reject the deal, but the President has promised to veto their bill.  This means that the President can effectively tell Congress and the American people, who also oppose this deal, to drop dead by cobbling together 34 votes in the Senate from his most rabid (or frightened) followers.   

I’m sure this “one man show” was not the intent of our Founders, but Mr. Obama has decided that he is smarter and more important than the American people.  It will take Democrats in the Senate to reel this dictator in and bring order back to Washington.