I’ve been amused by the North Carolina Left’s faux outrage over what it deems the Republican power grab in our state. The Left fails to note, of course, that voters gave the GOP huge majorities in the legislature, as well as the top two jobs in the state. That doesn’t mean the majority will always be right. It just means that they have won power and are using it. Bottom line: there’s no need to grab power that has been given to you by the electorate. Still, the Left is outraged. But will they squawk about President Obama’s plans to grab power from Congress, where only one chamber is held by the president’s party? Will the Left bemoan the executive branch power grab that’s likely to come?
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, he responded by laying the groundwork to bypass Congress in his second term.
To be sure, Obama did outline an ambitious legislative agenda. He called for comprehensive immigration reform, gun control and a $9 minimum wage. He proposed universal pre-school, more infrastructure spending and backed a bill that would encourage mortgage refinancing. He also described a centralized industrial policy for manufacturing and energy. He couched all of this in bipartisan sounding rhetoric about “reasonable compromise” and putting “the nation’s interests before party.” But on multiple occasions, these proposals were accompanied by vows to take executive action.
I await the outrage.
