Posted on 01/18/2016 7:12:48 PM PST by Isara
Some conservatives are concerned over Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump's vow to take the same path of bypassing Congress as President Barack Obama - even though the billionaire said his actions would be "much better" than Obama's and done for "the right things."
"Does Mr. Trump enjoy power? Is he more likely to prefer limited and constitutional or unlimited and unconstitutional power? Where is he likely to fall on that scale? I tend to think it's with the maximum possible exercise of power," Colin Hanna, president of the conservative public policy group Let Freedom Ring USA, told TheBlaze.
Trump, as president, might well use the executive powers to advance conservative causes, Hanna added, but he said there is more at stake.
"Every conservative at heart is a constitutionalist. The values are intertwined and inseparable for separation of powers and a limited federal government," Hanna said. "He might use executive power on issues we agree with. The point is, it isn't about the individual issues. It's a deeper and fundamental question."
President Barack Obama has used executive action most recently to restrict gun sales. Before that, he shielded about 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation and to delayed implementation of some of the most unpopular aspects of his own health care law. After last week's State of the Union address, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough promised "audacious executive action" in the president's final 11 months.
During an interview with NBC News, Trump was asked if he would use executive actions in a similar fashion to the way President Barack Obama has.
"I won't refuse it. I'm going to do a lot of things. He led the way," Trump said. He added, "But I'm going to use them much better and they're going to serve a much better purpose than he's done."
In a separate interview with CBS News, Trump said of executive action, "Well, I will say this: There's a lot of precedent based on what he's doing."
"Conservatives have been angered at the Obama pen-and-phone approach to bypassing Congress; they should be equally disturbed at Trump for viewing Obama's unconstitutional power grabs as a model that he would follow," David McIntosh, the president of Club for Growth McIntosh, told TheBlaze.
Trump has soared in GOP primary polls despite his previous support for funding Planned Parenthood and abortion rights, favoring a single-payer health care system and for expanding the powers of government to seize private property among other liberal positions. This has come at the angst of many in the conservative movement.
"Donald Trump has already made it clear that he's like Obama in supporting single-payer health care, bailouts, and higher taxes," McIntosh said. "So, it's no surprise that Trump also wants to trash the Constitution by abusing executive power."
As a candidate for president, Trump has taken a conservative stance on illegal immigration and advocated cutting taxes, while he has considerably softened on his other liberal positions.
"He's aggressive not necessarily progressive," Hanna said. "His political philosophy is an appreciation of his own brilliance and that he can solve problems better than anyone else. He is not guided by a set of principles or a philosophy."
The Trump campaign did not respond to inquiries for this story last week or on Monday.
Former Bush administration Justice Department attorney John Yoo, now a law professor at University of California at Berkeley, warned in a Washington Post commentary that executive actions were intended for foreign policy, national security and emergencies - not domestic policy making.
He wrote that Obama's actions would encourage his success to move similarly. At least, Yoo wrote, that makes more of Obama's agenda reversible.
"Obama's upending of the Constitution's structure and limits may prove its own undoing," Yoo wrote. "The next chief executive can suspend, and then repeal, all of the executive orders and regulations of the past seven years. He or she could terminate the Iran nuclear deal and the climate change pact; reinstate enforcement of the immigration laws; and fully reveal Obamacare's distortions of health care. The further Obama stretches his powers to reach for a legacy, the more powerfully his successor can snap the Constitution back into its proper shape."
Obama knows how to play the propaganda game. While he's issued fewer Executive Orders than other Presidents he's issued more Presidential Memoranda than any other President, and they have the same effect.
“His judgment may also be off”
Fully agree; we have been seeing it on full display...only a week or two ago, Ted Cruz was a “great guy”, “smart guy”, “been very nice to me”...now Trump turns on a dime and says Cruz is a “dishonest, nasty guy”, “ultimate hypocrite”, “nobody likes Ted”, etc, etc.....only because Ted hit back for the nonsensical birther statements pushed by Trump.
Phineas T Trump admits in the debate that he’s going after Ted now due to the Cruz surge in polling. Trump takes to Twitter Saturday morning and lashes out hysterically at Ted. I know there are space limits with Twitter, but what does it say about a person who puts out nearly 20 hostile tweets on Saturday morning alone!
I don’t know what this erratic behavior is exactly (schizophrenia, megalomania, narcissism???), but there appears to be something wrong with Trump’s personalty. What is President Trump to do when his other bro-friend, Vlad Putin, makes a military or financial move against NATO, Europe, or the US to challenge the Donald? And, he’s got access to the nuclear codes as well as to his iPhone Twitter account!? We should all be at least a bit frightened by this prospect. Hillary or Bernie (certainly the DNC) are already formulating that TV ad!!!
I see the new talking point has been sent out from Rove’s HQ
“Trump the dictator”
Pure unadulterated hysteric BS.
An ad hominem (Latin for “to the man” or “to the person”[1]), short for argumentum ad hominem, is an attack on an argument made by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, rather than attacking the argument directly. When used inappropriately, it is a logical fallacy in which a claim or argument is dismissed on the basis of some irrelevant fact or supposition about the author or the person being criticized.[2] Ad hominem reasoning is not always fallacious, for example, when it relates to the credibility of statements of fact or when used in certain kinds of moral and practical reasoning.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
I have studied the issue enough that I am quite certain that Cruz in a Natural Born Citizen and that I would be very shocked if any court found otherwise.
You can’t blame this on Trump. The blame here is n a lay down and do noting congress that let O’Bastard get away with everything.
Please don’t commit suicide when Trump wins the election. There are many anti depressants that can stop your self destructive thoughts.
No one has any objection to Trump, Cruz or whoever becomes president using executive orders to revoke Obama’s unconstitutional executive orders. There is no question that the President can do that Constitutionally. The problem is if Trump goes further then tries to push his legislative agenda through unconstitutional executive orders. That is what it sounds like what Trump is thinking of doing when he talks about how Obama is setting a precedent that he (Trump) will use for good.
Show me someone who ran for political office that did not seek power. Are you all crazy?
You said: “Fully agree; we have been seeing it on full display...only a week or two ago, Ted Cruz was a "great guy;smart guy; been very nice to me; now Trump turns on a dime and says Cruz is "dishonest, nasty guy; ultimate hypocrite; nobody likes Ted etc, etc.....”
After I made that post about Trump not getting enough sleep and what that could cause, someone who is an avid Trump supporter posted to me I did not know what I was talking about.
I was a psychological examiner for twenty years. Some of my patients were sent to me by the Social Security Administration to determine if those patients should receive disability payments. They made their decision whether or not to give them disability payments based on the testing I did and my recommendation whether or not they were disabled to the point they could not work.
I tested people for about five hours, did an interview with them before testing, reviewed all their medicines as they had to bring those with them, and my reports were about eleven pages long, singled spaced. I knew their future depended on my report so I was diligent to make sure my recommendations were correct.
In that work, I had to know about brain functions, brain injury, brain strokes, AND what lack of sleep does to the brain.
I stand by my post Trump likely does not get enough deep sleep (he says he sleeps 3-4 hours) to reset his brain and body. I would like to know if his balance is off, can he walk in a straight line, does he tend to fall? Does he still play golf or has he stopped doing that? Not enough deep sleep can cause balance problems as well as the other behaviors I posted.
When Trump posted what his doctor said about him, I laughed. The doctor's report read like Trump wrote it and I think he did and had the doctor sign it. There was one sentence that was Trump to a tee. It read something like this: “Mr. Trump is the healthiest man to ever run for president.” I laughed. Of course, no doctor knows the health of every man who ran for president. That sentence was an absolute lie and no doctor would write that.
You really need to get out more.
Our country and its elections are in real danger. I can tell you that I personally witnessed hundreds of illegals voting at my polling location during the last election. I was a lawyer for Romney at the Las Vegas polls and had to stand by and watch these people vote, protecteded by their Union enforcers. Why? because they were pre-Registered by their union bosses, so of course we could not stop them from voting. The election has been stolen at the registration table.
We could have had Nevada last time. I have no idea how many other states we lost in a similar fashion. We are going to have a tough time voting ourselves out of this mess. A bare majority will not suffice. Would a Cruz candidacy produce a landslide victory by attracting all large swath of voters? NO.
You lack urgency. Its in the ninth inning. And we are down by 4.
sure i’m ok with a dictator to undo the last 150 years of dictators
common core dept of education eliminated - next dictator has to deal with educated people. i’m ok with that. if i got elected i might do the line up here boom with congress and most on the government payroll. then call for elections and you all figure it out.>>>
not my dictator but i post the rational. there is no republic or functional government. the flag outside my house is inverted. i’m ready for the aftermath.
Go read post #30 - seems like some Trump supporters are already thinking in those terms.
All Article 3 judges (District, circuit court and SCOTUS) are lifetime appointments. You can't "clean house" in the Federal judicial system.
I find it amusing that so many of the people who have been screaming to the heavens that Cruz is not eligible because of a phrase in the Constitution that has never been defined in US law, are apparently in favor of just abandoning the Constitution altogether.
EOs are constitutional only insofar as they are used to manage how the Executive branch operates. They are not constitutional if they change duly passed statutes or bypass the other two branches of the government.
Repealing EOs can ONLY be done by EO. People are not concerned about Trump or anyone else repealing Obama's EOs by using EOs. What concerns the Constitutional conservatives is Trump's apparent plan to use EOs in the same way that Obama has - to circumvent the separation of powers and impose policies that he cannot get Congress to pass.
Yes, they are.
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