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Right Wing is Absolutely Losing It Over President Obama's Executive Action

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President Obama announced his long-awaited executive action for immigrants last night and Republicans and conservatives, well, let’s just say they are not taking it well.  Commentators and legal experts concur that President Obama is well within his legal authority, and that yesterday’s executive order is no different from moves taken by former Presidents Ronald Reagan or George Bush and every other president since Eisenhower.  Yet Republicans continue to insist on losing it, in a really ugly way that could come back to haunt them with Latino, APIA, and immigrant voters in the 2016 election and beyond.

We’ve written about how Republican members of Congress are taking the news, and compiled this list of House members who are already pushing to impeach Obama.  But there’s much, much more that is extreme and ugly.  Will Republicans opposed to Obama’s executive announcement realize that this is who they’re siding with?  Check out a short list below (thanks in large part to Right Wing Watch and Media Matters):

  • Mike Huckabee apparently took offense with Obama for quoting Scripture during last night’s speech
  • Kris Kobach, architect of the “self-deportation” strategy that lost Mitt Romney the 2012 election, claimed that executive action will lead to “socialism” and “ethnic cleansing”
  • Sheriff Joe Arpaio is suing the President (ironic as Arpaio is currently undergoing racial profiling training as a result of a federal lawsuit against him)
  • GOP Governors Rick Perry (R-TX), Scott Walker (R-WI), and Bobby Jindal (R-LA) are all also thinking about suing Obama; good luck to them if they later decide to run for president and later need Latino votes in 2016
  • William Gheen of ALIPAC is calling for sheriffs to arrest Obama
  • Yesterday, the day of Obama’s announcement, happened to be a Mexican holiday called “Revolution Day,” which some extremists don’t believe is a coincidence
  • Rush Limbaugh warned that executive action would “open the flood gates to the third world” and said that the federal government “damn well needs to be shut down
  • A Fox News host said that Obama is “double-daring” the GOP to impeach him; Bill O’Reilly said that executive action is a “trap” intended to “bait” the GOP toward impeachment
  • Phyllis Schafly said that executive action could lead to “civil war” and that Obama is advocating “suicide for America
  • Pamela Gellar claimed that Obama’s announcement is the “death knell” of America
  • Allen West believes there’s going to be an “incredible cry” for Obama’s impeachment
  • An analysis at the Washington Times criticized Obama for his “scorched earth rampage” and quoted a line from The Dark Knight: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
  • National Review editorial called Obama’s move a “constitutional crisis” (remember: Obama has done exactly what the Supreme Court has agreed that presidents have the power to do, and the same thing that every president since Eisenhower has done).  Contributors on the site called Obama an “emperor” who has completed his “imperial transformation”
  • Speaking of the Supreme Court, Mickey Kaus is holding out hope, claiming that “if Obama’s executive action is as broad as described, the Supreme Court will strike it down.”
  • Townhall columnist compared Obama to Hitler, Stalin, and Kim Jong-un, and Democrats to a gang lord, writing, “People sometimes ask, ‘Why didn’t the Germans do something about Hitler?’ or ‘Why didn’t the Russians do something about Stalin?’ Or ‘Why don’t the North Koreans overthrow their regime?’  The answer is fear….So now we know the answer to the question ‘Why don’t the Republicans do something about Obama?'”
  • Sarah Palin said that Obama is “endangering the nation” (she also previously said that “his unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘no mas.'”)
  • Sen. Jeff Session’s Communications Director claimed that executive action is “worse than we ever imagined” (see here for what Sessions himself, and his Republican cohorts in Congress, have been saying)
  • Roy Beck and NumbersUSA are charging Obama of “deception” for not mentioning work permits during last night’s speech (even though the speech as a whole was relatively short on details)
  • Laura Ingraham called Obama’s announcement a “soft dictatorship.”

This from the party that says it is committed to responsible governance.  And we’re pretty sure that this is just the beginning.  Stay tuned for more.