The Most Unhinged Responses to Obama’s Immigration Speech

On Thursday night, President Barack Obama announced the executive actions he was taking to potentially shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. The president’s critics—including those in the Republican leadership who blocked the House of Representatives from voting on immigration reform—promptly took to their computers and furiously banged away at their keyboards.

There’s a broad legal consensus that Obama’s new policy directives are likely constitutional, particularly because they’re centered on prioritization and inaction. The crux of the new initiatives: the administration will focus the limited resources it has to fight undocumented immigration on efforts to deport those who pose a security risk or commit crimes, and downplay efforts to deport undocumented parents of children who were born or grew up here.

As is often the case in this great land of partisan party politics, a narrative quickly coalesced. Obama was instantly branded an “emperor” and a “king.” Let’s take a look.

Pat Buchanan wrote that things would never be the same: “Our rogue president has crossed an historic line, and so has the republic.”

“We have just taken a monumental step away from republicanism toward Caesarism,” Buchanan continued. “For this is rule by diktat, the rejection of which sparked the American Revolution.”

“Apparently, America now has its first emperor,” Sen. Jeff Sessions wrote in USA Today. “And he has issued an imperial order to dissolve America's borders.”

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http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/11/responses-obamas-immigration-speech