During his campaign-style “Rural Tour” bus trip through the Midwest last week, President Obama told Iowans that he’s “confident in the power of your voice. I’m confident in your values — those are the values that we share. I don’t care whether you’re a Democrat or Republican or an independent — all of us here are patriots and everybody here cares about our country and puts it first. And if we can have that kind of politics then nothing can stop us.”
With such rhetoric, Obama seems to follow former President Clinton’s example of appealing to the center in order to win a second term after disastrous midterm elections. But a series of bureaucratic maneuvers this year show that Obama is different. He now campaigns to the center, yes, but he hasn’t stopped pushing hard to the left with his agenda.
Clinton came to office with ambitious liberal plans, which he largely abandoned after the 1994 midterm elections. In order to secure his own re-election, he bowed to pressure from his right, going so far as to sign a landmark welfare reform bill and declare “the era of Big Government” to be over. Obama likewise advanced an aggressive left-wing agenda in his first two years, which included Obamacare and his $820 billion economic stimulus. But after the electoral “shellacking” of 2010, which these bills helped bring about, Obama remains fully dedicated to his original goals, and continues to push them with executive powers.
To Congress’ failure to pass cap-and trade legislation, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has responded with coal emission rules that incrementally have the same effect. Now that Obama lacks a Congress even remotely capable of passing “card check” legislation (to give unions the upper hand in workplace elections), Obama’s National Labor Relations Board has gone to bat for the unions. In addition to suing Boeing Co. for merely building a factory in a right-to-work state, the NLRB is now trying to enact rules providing “quickie” elections, which curtail employers’ ability to resist unionization, and a new rule forcing employers to advertise unionization to employees.
Obama’s overreach continues with his recent suspension of deportation for 300,000 “low-priority” illegal immigrants. During a Q&A session on Twitter, White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Munoz indicated that this new policy is a temporary substitute for the Dream Act, another left-wing priority that failed to pass Congress in 2010.
The suspension of deportations hearkens back to a 2010 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services memo that suggested the President Obama pursue “meaningful immigration reform absent legislative action.” Staffers wrote the memo after key members of Congress balked at Obama’s promise to grant “a pathway [to] legal status” for illegal immigrants. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the “memo gives credence to our concerns that the administration will go to great lengths to circumvent Congress and unilaterally execute a back-door amnesty plan.”
And just a few weeks ago, Obama considered executing a back-door debt-ceiling increase, but eventually came to a last-minute agreement with House Republicans. Even when the president seems to engage with Congress on the economy, he shows little sign of changing the policies that led to the massive Democratic defeats last November.
Although he struck a centrist tone throughout his “Rural Tour,” Obama concluded the trip by promising to announce a new jobs plan in September — “more proposals to put people to work right now. And some of them — yes, some of them cost money.” In short, Obama will likely unveil a low-dollar rehash of the 2009 stimulus.
The upshot is that Obama has not changed much since the midterm elections. Americans can expect more of them same from him for the next 16 months, and even more than that if he’s re-elected.
Joel Gehrke is a commentary staff writer for The Examiner.
