Hypocrite: In 2008 Obama Said Executive Power Was Dangerous

by Warner Todd Huston | February 13, 2014 2:39 pm

We all know that Obama has been abusing his power as President, trying to push his policies on Americans through backdoor means and subverting the legislative process, but what did Obama think of the penchant of presidents to extend executive power when he ran for president in 2008? Well he was against it for George W. Bush, of course.

A lot of people have been pointing out that this president is lawlessly using his powers to regulate and to issue Executive Orders to subvert the legislative process and to get around having to live by our American system to force things on Americans that he can’t get politically or through the legal process. Yet Obama stood against this very sort of presidential action in 2008.

At a campaign stop on March 31, 2008 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Obama had these harsh words about what he considered Bush’s obscene misdeeds with executive power:

“I taught constitutional law for ten years,” President Obama claimed. “I take the Constitution very seriously. The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all and that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America.”

So, what is he saying now that he is President?

In his recent State Of The Unions speech, for instance, Obama told the nation, “I have got a pen and I have got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders.”

Obama has warned Congress since nearly his first year in office that he’d ignore them, go around them and do what ever he wants.

In fact, only days ago Obama said that as President, he can do whatever he wants[1] to do.

This arrogance is all a far cry from the candidate in 2008 that pledged to “reverse” executive abuse of power.

Welcome to Obama’s Banana Republic.

(H/T American Commitment[2])