Actions To ‘Fundamentally Transform’ US

Like past Obama administration scandals, the Benghazi incompetence and cover-up, the Department of Justice’s anti-media activities, and the IRS’s political targeting and suppression of conservatives reveal the administration’s contempt for Constitutional limitations on the powers a sovereign people grant central government.

Power, less limited or unlimited, is what big government needs to achieve a transformational vision for the country.

Even when he had both houses of Congress, Obama wielded power as if he were the community organizer-in-chief. Community organizers lack governmental power, but assume pseudo-moral power and mobilize small, loud groups of people to intimidate office-holders, banks and other corporations, and to shout down opposing viewpoints. They use ridicule, distortion, threats and physical intimidation. The play book is Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” which proclaims “the ends justify the means.” This is the president’s core competency.

If only he were still Barack the Obscure, organizer extraordinaire, law professor mediocre. Professor Obama criticized the Constitution’s limits on the power of the central government, and few cared. Now we care.

Obama’s statement “I am not a dictator” echoes Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” But Nixon was a crook. And with media sycophants like Thomas Friedman wishing we could be “China for a day,” there is a small, loud constituency for dictatorial power.

Like Nixon, Obama added the power of government’s most feared agency, the IRS, to his arsenal against an unruly people.

The IRS ostensibly was insulated from White House influence after Watergate. But circumstantial evidence suggests collaboration between the IRS union and the White House in initiating the suppression of conservative groups.

It’s worse if the White House was not involved. As the Wall Street Journal’s James Tarranto has noted, “It would mean that the government itself [not just an administration] . . has turned against the citizenry and the Constitution.”

About Benghazi and the AP, we continue to learn more, despite the efforts of the “most transparent administration in history,” in the president’s characteristically modest words.

Congressional hearings have shown Obama, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and their spokes-folk lied by implying or stating that the Benghazi attacks had anything to do with the infamous, but obscure anti-Muslim video. They knew better, but pretended otherwise to get past Nov. 6.

Of the AP, we know Eric Holder, the most brutally partisan attorney general since Nixon’s John Mitchell, was the approval authority for seizing phone records. He says he recused, though not in writing. Right.

These scandalous actions materially assisted Obama’s re-election — the ends justified the means. The Benghazi cover-up hid decisions that cost four Americans their lives and preserved past the election the false narrative that Al Qaeda was “on the run.” The IRS directly crippled the funding and organization of those opposed to the Obama agenda. And knowledge of the AP scandal may have discouraged liberals who care about civil liberties from voting. In contrast, even had voters known of the Watergate cover-up, Nixon still would probably have swamped McGovern.

So Obama’s re-election was more than just low-information voters and loyal Democrats, a successful class warfare campaign, a shamelessly supportive media (don’t think of Candy Crowley or Scott Pelley), and the soft bigotry of low expectations (blame George W. Bush). The shrouded Putinism of Chicago-style political intimidation also fueled his victory.

Even as exit polls showed voters wanted a smaller government doing less, they elected the One who would “fundamentally transform” the country to bigger government doing more. And doing it badly.

Government’s reach, not the number of federal employees, is what makes government big. Obama is the condescending face of all-knowing, all-regulating government. Abuse of power is a feature, not a bug.

The president recently counseled Ohio State graduates not to fear government. He falsely characterized limited government advocates as “voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems” [my emphasis]. That’s a straw man even Joe Biden could knock down. Maybe there’s one anarchist somewhere who believes that, but Obama’s fantasy caricatures even Ron Paul.

Conservatives recognize central government best performs some functions. The Constitution enumerates them. We follow the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Rather than stand for re-election on his pathetic record, Obama, his team and supporters used government power to subvert the election. So tyranny begins.

BUDDY ROGERS, A ROGERS RESIDENT, EARNED HIS DOCTORATE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN. HE CONTINUES TO WORK ON BECOMING EDUCATED.

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