Executive Orders and the Tea Party

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/15/executive-orders-and-the-tea-party/

If Republican candidate debates are an indication, executive orders have become anathema to Tea Partiers. This is bad news for Rick Perry– and not just because in a lapse from his usual know-nothing, puritanical moralizing, the Texas governor issued an executive order mandating that young girls be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (a sexually transmitted cause of cervical cancer). A week or two ago, if it had just been a campaign contribution from Merck Pharmaceuticals that led Perry astray, he could have counted on the Tea Party’s movers and shakers to be forgiving. After all, political corruption is their life’s blood. But now that the word has gone out to the rank-and-file that executive orders are bad, all bets are off.

Perry has other executive orders on his record too, as does former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. It’s a governor thing; chief executives like executive orders. In Romney’s case, it hardly matters because it has been clear for months that, to get the nomination, he will have to be forced down the throats of the Tea Party rank-and-file. Perry, on the other hand, was their new golden boy, a more electable version of Michele Bachmann. If he falters on this account, Bachmann, though written off when Perry entered the race, may be back in the running – if only she has the wits to keep on taking advantage of the situation (and assuming that her pray-the-gay-away husband Marcus gives her permission)!

The hypocrisy is staggering. There was hardly a peep of complaint in proto-Tea Party quarters about executive orders – or, worse, signing statements – when George W. Bush abused those practices at historically unprecedented levels. The right’s newfound aversion plainly has more to do with hating Barack Obama (for all the wrong reasons!) than political principles. Nevertheless, Bachmann and her co-thinkers have a point.

It isn’t or rather shouldn’t be the job of the President to make laws, but only to execute them. That is what the authors of the U.S. Constitution believed, and for good democratic reasons. Over the years, a host of complications have clouded the issue, and both the Congress and the courts have added complexities. But Tea Partiers abhor complexity; they don’t have a head for it. The general idea, straightforwardly applied, is enough for them.

More at the link --

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Dunno. Think the TP will split hairs and endorse Executive Orders

if those Orders respect their wishes.

[gratuitous]

2. The hypocrisy is indeed staggering

But not unexpected. You can damn betcha that when it's their guy doing the signing on the statements, they'll forget all about that Horrid Black Man and be all in favor of signing statements and executive orders. The exact same phenomenon occurs on those "up or down votes" as well. When it's a Republican nominee or scheme being given a little extra scrutiny, the yammering is non-stop about the Will of the People and up or down votes. When it's something else, for example Drama Queen Coburn holding up FAA funding over a little temper tantrum, then it's The World's Greatest Deliberative Body saving the country from out of control spending on bike lanes.