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Did Gruber Videos Force Obama to Speed Up Amnesty?

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On November 19, 2014 @ 7:11 pm In The Point | 20 Comments

Ever since the election Obama has been tossing out one shiny distraction after another.

There was a fake “climate pact” with China that didn’t obligate it to anything. Obama suddenly began beating the drum for net neutrality by sending progressive activists after his own FCC chair in one of the most hilarious Wag the Dog moments of his administration.

Amnesty was supposed to be his weapon of choice for sabotaging Republican legislative action. The Republicans propose X, Obama goes into amnesty mode.

For appearance’s sake, the amnesty rollout was supposed to follow a Republican “failure” to move forward allowing Obama to posture as the only serious guy in Washington who is just trying to get things done while Congress keeps obstructing and arguing.

Now Obama is jumping the gun.

Executive amnesty is not all that popular even among Democrats. Pulling that move ideally required blaming Republicans. Announcing his plans with a high profile speech before the GOP Senate is even in session makes it obvious that Obama is not responding to anything Congress did or did not do.

Sure there will be plenty of the same old “If Congress passes the bill that I want, it will supersede my illegal amnesty” nonsense, and “I’m ready to work with Congress anytime, but first I’m going to rule unilaterally like some mad emperor because they suck” stuff in there. And it’s going to look thinner and faker than it would have a little later.

So why is Obama doing it?

1. That boy needs attention – Obama simply can’t reconcile himself to being a lame duck and with Valerie Jarrett’s prompting, no doubt stung by the Politico story and pressure from the Dems to fire her, convinced him that he can establish a domineering role by shooting first.

That’s the kind of obnoxious arrogance that helped make Obama unpopular, not just with Republicans, but even with his own party.

 

2. The Gruber videos created an urgent need for a distraction. Phony climate pacts and phonier calls for net neutrality weren’t big enough. Gruber is leaking slowly into the mainstream consciousness. This is an emergency effort to suck up all the oxygen in the room, including that of Republicans, with the biggest distraction he can currently manage that doesn’t involve starting a war.

Obama is tripping over his own feet here. He’s sabotaging his own rationale for amnesty by not even pretending to work with a Republican Senate, many of whose members are quite amnesty friendly, but that’s nothing new for him.

In the great political equation, Obama always comes first. Before amnesty. Before anything else. He’ll risk a lot for a measure only because he doesn’t believe he can lose. That same arrogance leads him to toss it out as a distraction assuming that no one can stop him anyway and that he can always repair the damage to his popularity later if he uses it to distract from a major scandal now.


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