Lincoln Saved the Union by Doing His Constitutional Duty - a Lesson for President Obama

Things in Washington are becoming more bizarre by the day. US Senator Ted Cruz, the lone Republican Senator to actively oppose last year's raising of the national debt ceiling, said earlier this week that it would be "irresponsible" for Congress to grant President Obama a debt ceiling increase without spending reforms. Cruz, who spoke to reporters after remarks at the Heritage Foundation, said he hoped the House would not "go down that road" of agreeing to an increase in the government's borrowing authority without demanding measures to rein in long-term deficits : "President Obama is asking Congress to give him a blank check to allow him to keep maxing out the credit card without doing anything to fix the problem. I think that's irresponsible," Cruz said. House Republicans disagreed, allowing the Democrat House members to give their President that blank check useable until March 2015. Cruz was a central figure in the government shutdown battle in the autumn of 2013, with his campaign to deny funds to Obamacare. His efforts, and those of outside conservative groups, were influential in persuading House Republicans to vote to block government funding for the new fiscal year if it included money for the law. The standoff launched a 16-day partial shutdown and rattled financial markets concerned about the debt limit, which needed an increase shortly thereafter. Since then, Congress has reached two minor budget deals and talk of brinkmanship has subsided. Cruz did not use procedural tactics to try to block or delay Senate consideration of the House bill raising the debt ceiling without attaching spending conditions. This occurred because the President would not talk to Speaker Boehner about compromise and insisted on a clean bill or a shutdown. ~~~~~ Former Florida GOP Congressman Allen West, a military career officer, says the GOP has a better chance of getting what it wants after the midterm election. West believes taking the Senate and maintaining the majority in the House will lead to "reform the right way and not have a repeat of what happened in 2012." West says the unemployment rate is higher than the official 6.6%, but President Obama wants to open the flood gates with more people, some former terrorists, being accepted as legal residents. ~~~~~ The Obama administration Monday delayed unilaterally another part of Obamacare, granting medium-size businesses a delay in paying a tax penalty until 2016 for not providing workers with health insurance coverage. Obama's pronouncement, the latest move to counter a storm of criticism from the business community about Obamacare, refueled Republican criticism that his signature healthcare law is a "train wreck" and "jobs killer." Republican Senator Ted Cruz, a staunch Obamacare critic, tweeted "If President Obama likes his health care law, why won't he keep it?" Nationally syndicated journalist Charles Krauthammer called Obama's constant changes to Obamacare "lawlessly" changing the rules, more akin to what goes on in a banana republic. "It's now reached the point where it's so endemic that nobody even notices or complains," he said. ~~~~~ Former Speaker Newt Gingrich weighed in on President Obama's blatant challenge to the GOP and Speaker Boehner, saying it hasn't helped that the President declared this month that he would bypass Congress : " 'I’ve got a pen, and … I’ve got a phone,' he said, to implement his economic agenda. The whole environment has been poisoned by Barack Obama talking about using his pen, doing things independently," Gingrich said regarding immigration reform. "I know Boehner made a point very clearly that as long as Obama is unwilling to reassure members that he actually will obey the law, it's very hard to move anything substantive on any topic, because the White House is so clearly dishonest." Gingrich also scored Obama's apparent lack of candor in his interview with Bill O'Reilly of Fox News before the Super Bowl, calling it "one of the most blatantly dishonest interviews I've ever seen an American President give." ~~~~~ Dear readers, the common thread in all of this is that President Obama has decided not to accept the role spelled out for the President in the Constitution. Instead of working with Congress and the Courts, constitutionally equal branches of the federal government, Obama has chosen to challenge and threaten the Supreme Court to construe laws as he would have it, he has chosen which duly enacted laws to enforce and which laws he prefers not to enforce, and now he has, after trying it and finding little pushback from Congress, decided to publicly state that he will use his pen, that is, write laws himself when that power is reserved for Congress in the Constitution. All this after taking an oath on the Lincoln Bible to preserve and protect the Constitution. There is a Lincoln quote that is little known : "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it." ___Abraham Lincoln. Every time I read that, I hear a Lincoln who was tied to Jefferson and Paine and Washington. It is a remarkable statement, coming from a President who went to war to save the Union. It makes his last plea to the South - we are brothers, we must not be enemies - that much more poignant. Reading this statement, one can understand how much Lincoln, as a great constitutionalist, must have wanted to let the South go its own way. But, as President, he also felt compelled to save the Union. He is the only President thus far who has had to make that choice between the constitutional right of Americans to revolt and withdraw from the Union and the presidential responsibility to protect the Union. Today, we can feel the ghosts of Lincoln's great constitutional struggle. But this time it is the President who wants to secede from the Union by ignoring the Constitution. And he wants to drag all of America with him. No one, and certainly not the President, has the right to ignore the Constitution. Mr. Obama must be prudent and uphold his oath to protect and preserve the Constitution, to truly follow the President he says he feels drawn to - Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln did his constitutional duty. He saved the Union.