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."
Trump has already said he will work with the congress. He believes he is the deal maker who can succeed where Obama never tried.
The premise of this thread is not clear, but certainly EOs can be used to back out of Obama deals. But Trump will follow the constitution
The responses here make me weep for the Republic.
No, I wouldn’t. I am not naive enough to ignore the likelihood of another Democrat President in the future. I fear an escalation to dictatorship most of all. I would like permanent measures put into place limiting government power, not extending it.
I had another poster inquire why I thought trump’s election would be the death of the Republic.
The school of thought is that they have to be specific to areas of current Law, but that is as vague as what constitutes a Natural Born Citizen.
FDR issued thousands of EO’s with the most famous being the Internment of Japanese American Citizens. I guess if Lincoln could ignore Habeas Corpus and imprison his Political Enemies during the Civil War, anything is fair game.
Thank you. It’s meaning will be completely lost on all but a few out of every thousand and by the end of this generation, it may very well be lost for good.
Well said.
The quantity of Executive Orders isn’t the problem. If Obama issued only a dozen but each of those were in effect unconstitutional legislation, or which explicitly stopped the execution of laws that he himself has signed, then we have a much larger problem. This isn’t remedied by giving “our guy” the same power. If that happens, we aren’t any different than any banana republic which is what we’d like to avoid.
Pacifists and defeatists need to get a taste of a real leader who will grab the enemy, twist him by the nose and kick him in the ass!
What did you expect? We’ve been waiving around the constitution like Chamberlin for forty years, and these commie bastards have ignored it every time! If you want to play football by the rules while they use snipers, you always lose!
Leni
Bingo. What started as a positive anti-establishment movement has turned into a full-bore desire for dictatorship. It was previously impossible to understand how some leaders came to power in history. The advent of a population that allowed Obama to go full dictatorship is now being countered by a movement to double down in the name of repairing it. The result will be no better if this continues.
Re: “But Trump will follow the constitution”.
Obama swore on the Bible that he would do that, too. Actions will speak louder.
The question is, will trump more or less play around with what Obama has wrought, or will he expand and consolidate power, much as Caesar Augustus consolidated power and more or less castrated the Roman Senate, becoming the first Roman emporer. My son thinks eventually we’ll call our emporer The Donald.
Sadly, the Constitution is already gone, and the United States does not function under rule of law.
The fix is in, and similar situations routinely have vastly different resolution based on who you are, who you know and who receives your tribute.
Men without scruples can subvert any Constitution, and the only way to bring them to justice is to employ a man more powerful in leadership than the degenerates have.
In order to write our Constitution in the first place, we had to employ a man more powerful in leadership than the Brits and Tories that abused the Law over the American Patriots, and grant him great executive authority.
Then we had to bring the Brits and Tories to justice by force of arms under executive order.
Finally, we were able to write the Constitution while protected from the abuse of Law by Executive Order, and implement it more than a dozen years later.
That, gentlemen, is the only way you get a decent Constitution, ... Force.
No chance of that. His supporters are made up of Patriots who are sick and tired of promises broken by the usual political set. We don’t intend to do the same thing again and elect someone chosen for us by the establishment and elite set. This time, we pick whomever we want and it is not another cream puff afraid to disobey political correctness. The Constitution will be obeyed again.
I agree. It isn’t the EO, it the EO that doesn’t meet the guidelines that you just described.
Since Congress has done NOTHING to stop Obama from abusing EO’s (with the approval of the Justice Department I might add), the only way to know what Trump will do is to read the EO’s he submits.
In other words, he has to issue them for us to know what’s in them.
He already said he would issue an EO allowing Military Members to Carry Weapons on Base. Is that an Unconstitutional EO? I don’t know, do you?
So Trump will issue unconstitutional executive orders to circumvent separation of powers and federalism, but he will do it "better" and for "better things" than Obama...I see.
He did announce one - that he would issue an executive order mandating the death penalty for cop killers. That they should be severely punished is not debatable, but Trump's proposal completely undermines separation of powers and federalism - the prosecution is a state issue, not federal, and undermines the legislature to pass laws and the judiciary to hand out sentences...but what are little things like that, anyway?
Many will openly approve it though they would have disapproved it had the identical thing been said about anyone else - others will just yell “lies!” when presented with irrefutable evidence.
I don’t know who makes the rules regarding being armed on base. But making that EO shouldn’t override existing federal law. If it does, well that’s not how our system is supposed to work. The president isn’t allowed (or at least isn’t supposed to be) to write law.
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