All of a sudden, progressives have discovered the separation of powers. After eight years spent ridiculing tea partiers who bitterly cling to the Constitution, liberals now embrace its structural protections as their last, best hope to stop President Trump. Today’s Left is just the most recent social movement that has appealed to the Framers after failing at the ballot box. And while I always welcome new students of originalism, I can offer only two cheers for our fair-weather constitutionalists. Their conversion, alas, is born of political expediency, not any sense of constitutional consistency.
From 2009 through early 2017, President Obama’s supporters blithely enabled him as he trampled the Constitution’s parchment barriers to implement progressive policies: granting lawful presence to millions of aliens, suspending enforcement of marijuana laws, rewriting onerous provisions of Obamacare, entering into international “agreements” without Senate ratification, and the list goes on. At each juncture, charges of lawbreaking on the right were met with crickets on the left. Their defense: The president has the discretion to act; courts should not serve as forums for political disputes; gridlock in Congress justifies the president’s actions. All the while, I warned that the precedents set by the 44th president would pave the way for even bolder actions by the 45th president.
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