Obama’s Fundamental Transformation Is Falling Apart

 

A Democrat loves a bureaucrat; the one thinks he can change everything and should; the other one believes that it can be done and moves whatever is in the way to do so. Knowing this, Obama knew that he had a bureaucracy poised and ready to push left. It was just a matter of planting a few key seeds, removing a few sorry weeds, and watering generously with authority, money, and praise. The rest would take care of itself. You see the domestic agenda is largely the welfare agenda with a little environmental and consumer advocacy thrown in. So it was heavily allied with the left long before Obama was seated in office. Any pretense of an apolitical nature had always been just that.

These bureaucrats had to be frustrated with the W years; compassionate conservatism was a dud. In fact, it was worse than a dud, sharing as it did what was perfectly good secular civic authority with, of all things, religiously affiliated groups. There is nothing a bureaucrat despises more than charity (and most charity is Christian). Charity interferes with, no it diminishes, the mission. It satisfies constituents and it does so with a sense of subtle obligation. For the bureaucrat, all missions are forever and every constituent is like a heroin addict converted to government methadone. Those charities, those Christians, were stealing constituents, man; the whole raison d’etre.

So we should not be surprised that Obama was able to quickly politicize Transportation, Interior, Education, Energy, Housing, Labor, Health, and Commerce. With a few key appointments, some firings, and some stimulus money, these departments evolved rapidly left. After eight years marinating in Obamacare, environmental activism, Title IX, social justice crusades, and alternative energy, nearly every department was lockstep with the latest in left-wing activism. Every departmental webpage pictured solar panels, even the Department of Agriculture.

What is more amazing is just how leftist dogma and activism spread to departments thought to be nearly immune to overt politicization. Even the Department of Defense turned from sober realist and traditionalist into LGBT activist, gun control advocate, and foxhole feminist, allowing overarching theories of diversity to cloud realistic assessments of readiness and ability. Our Department of Defense was blinded and wussified.

The IRS, that somber, green-eyeshade department of accountants, was first mobilized as Obama’s army to enforce the AHC mandate. Energized as they were with new power and authority, given a few key executive placements, even the IRS was converted into a political action group designed to cleverly thwart the left’s adversaries by denying them tax-exempt status or targeting them outright for audit and oversight.

No doubt Hillary, et al., were able to push the State Department further to the left. This was not difficult as the department had always been prone to self-delusion, convinced that they can change the world by talking. Obama was of their same ilk, the chief talker. So it was not difficult to move the State Department to the left, elevated as they were in eight years of leading from behind and beer summit diplomacy.

The Justice Department was a tougher nut. The rank and file showed significant resistance to the politics of Obama’s first Attorney General, Eric Holder. Holder made wholesale changes in the department and in time, it began to move steadily left, especially on Social Justice issues. There is no doubt that Holder used the justice department to play double jeopardy in several high stakes social justice cases, elevating every racially charged police action into a civil rights case and popularizing the likes of the “Lives Matter” movement. But it wasn’t until Loretta Lynch took the helm at Justice that the department could be truly brought into the proper activist fold. By the time Lynch was appointed, the leadership at Justice was already blindly loyal to Obama. Under Lynch, they were ready to go on the offensive. The President did not have to direct anything. He knew that all the seeds he planted had now taken hard root and were at the ready to do whatever was needed to continue his “progress.” He kept just out of reach behind an opaque curtain of deniability. A simple update “wink, wink” and some words of wisdom and praise were enough to ensure that his legacy would live on in Hillary and the deep state.

Obama had done his job. With the help of a fawning media turned to agitprop, he had fundamentally changed the country by turning the media, the bureaucracy, and the courts into self-perpetuating machinations of leftist activism.

Then came Trump – brash, bruising and unpredictable. He was a political bull. He shrugged off bad press and the opposition like pests. Those in the Justice Department were appalled, did everything that they could to thwart this New York menace. Then they panicked and overplayed. They abused their authority. They broke laws. They violated our founding laws and principles. Trump won. And worse than that, he was on to them all along. Now they are being painfully exposed and rooted out one by one.

You see, dear reader, justice will be served. For some, it will be two squares a day in a federal facility.

Published in General
This post was promoted to the Main Feed by a Ricochet Editor at the recommendation of Ricochet members. Like this post? Want to comment? Join Ricochet’s community of conservatives and be part of the conversation. Join Ricochet for Free.

There are 30 comments.

Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.
  1. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    I have been told on Ricochet that there is nothing to see here.

    • #1
  2. Kevin Schulte Member
    Kevin Schulte
    @KevinSchulte

    Wish I could be as optimistic as you Doug on the perp walks.

    • #2
  3. DocJay Inactive
    DocJay
    @DocJay

    I guess time will tell if anyone is punished.   I would love to be in charge of that.

    • #3
  4. Addiction Is A Choice Member
    Addiction Is A Choice
    @AddictionIsAChoice

    Doug Kimball:

    …Even the Department of Defense turned from sober realist and traditionalist into LBGT activist, gun control advocate and foxhole feminist…

    “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

    – General George Casey (following the “workplace violence” at Ft. Hood.)

     

     

    • #4
  5. E. Kent Golding Moderator
    E. Kent Golding
    @EKentGolding

    Obama was very successful.   Our country is coming apart at the seams.  The democrats and progressives are getting ever more hostile and crazy,  and have taken over the management and HR departments of most major corporations.   The republicans are split into multiple ineffective camps.  Our churches are agnostic and nicey nicey.    The IRS  hostile morons managed to wait out the statute of limitations and are retired with large pensions.   Nothing is going to happen to Susan Rice,  Hillary Clinton, Loretta Lynch, or the other criminals in the Obama administration.   The republicans in congress just maintained funding for planned parenthood.    Obama was entirely successful – no one opposed him.

    • #5
  6. Quake Voter Inactive
    Quake Voter
    @QuakeVoter

    Wish I could be as optimistic.  But the fundamental transformation was halted in November 2010 and the biggest counterattack against that transformation — the spending caps — just fell apart.

    I’m afraid we are going to pay dearly for the incompetence of the administration over the first six months, including the choice of Sessions at DOJ.

    Some form of Obamacare is here to stay.  Maybe it will be replaced by Grahamcare, but how much progress is that really?

    Let’s keep in mind that without Flake, Corker, Collins, and Murkowski tax reform could have collapsed and Trump’s first year would have been historically dysfunctional.

    Let’s hope we keep Congress this Fall, and get a few more shots at reconciliation with a few more Senators, and the regulatory and judicial gains (Trump’s most enduring accomplishment) keep coming.

     

    • #6
  7. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    DocJay (View Comment):
    I guess time will tell if anyone is punished. I would love to be in charge of that.

    • #7
  8. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Doug Kimball: You see, dear reader, justice will be served. For some it will be two squares a day in a Federal facility.

    Inshah’allah.

    • #8
  9. aardo vozz Member
    aardo vozz
    @aardovozz

    Addiction Is A Choice (View Comment):

    Doug Kimball:

    …Even the Department of Defense turned from sober realist and traditionalist into LBGT activist, gun control advocate and foxhole feminist…

    “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

    – General George Casey (following the “workplace violence” at Ft. Hood.)

    However, more in keeping with one of the higher ideals of the U.S. of A.:

    “…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

    –President Abraham Lincoln( following the “workplace violence ” at Gettysburg.)

     

    • #9
  10. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Doug Kimball: You see, dear reader, justice will be served. For some it will be two squares a day in a Federal facility.

    I was mostly with you up to this.  This is just not going to happen.  Any investigation will show no wrong doing.  All laws come down to interpretation and the laws will be interpreted to allow their actions.  I suspect most things will have been done by the letter of the law, just not its spirit.  In the end a Democrat government, ran by Democrat bureaucrats, are not going to convict another Democrat bureaucrat for doing Democrat things, that further Democrat goals under a Democrat judiciary, especially while supported by a Democrat media.

    But it is a nice thought and a nice essay.

    • #10
  11. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    aardo vozz (View Comment):

    Addiction Is A Choice (View Comment):

    Doug Kimball:

    …Even the Department of Defense turned from sober realist and traditionalist into LBGT activist, gun control advocate and foxhole feminist…

    “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

    – General George Casey (following the “workplace violence” at Ft. Hood.)

    However, more in keeping with one of the higher ideals of the U.S. of A.:

    “…and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

    –President Abraham Lincoln( following the “workplace violence ” at Gettysburg.)

    Abraham Lincoln, one of the world’s favorite Democrats.

    • #11
  12. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Quake Voter (View Comment):
    Some form of Obamacare is here to stay.

    I am so angry about this. They had eight years to get ready for the right moment. As long as Trump doesn’t screw up foreign policy, he can just burn the rest of it down as far as I’m concerned.

    • #12
  13. RufusRJones Member
    RufusRJones
    @RufusRJones

    Doug Kimball: Obama knew that he had a bureaucracy poised and ready to push left. It was just a matter of planting a few key seeds, removing a few sorry weeds, and watering generously with authority, money, and praise. The rest would take care of itself. You see the domestic agenda is largely the welfare agenda with a little environmental and consumer advocacy thrown in.

    All of these people have salaries and pensions they have to protect. Funded at gunpoint.

    Then throw in the fact that 100% of the media are pro-statist.

     

    • #13
  14. Larry3435 Inactive
    Larry3435
    @Larry3435

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    I have been told on Ricochet that there is nothing to see here.

    There is a little bit to see here, but so far it is nothing as monolithic as some people want to believe.  We have all watched the left go utterly insane in their slavering desire to turn policy differences into criminal charges.  We don’t want to be like that, do we?  There may be something criminal in the Obama bureaucracy.  Maybe.  But you can’t prove that by simply saying “Obama was a leftist ideologue and some of his subordinates did squirrely things, so everyone goes to prison.”  It should be cause for sadness, not glee, if some Federal official is convicted of a crime.

    I for one am appalled at how Congress has turned into a monkey cage with opposing sides hurling their feces at each other.  Yeah, I know – the Democrats started it.  But it is appalling nonetheless.  They should tear down the Capitol building and put a huge sandbox in its place.

    • #14
  15. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Doug Kimball: Now they are being painfully exposed and rooted out one by one.

    And hopefully there will be prosecutions . . .

    • #15
  16. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    I hope you’re right about everything!

    • #16
  17. TheSockMonkey Inactive
    TheSockMonkey
    @TheSockMonkey

    Larry3435 (View Comment):
    It should be cause for sadness, not glee, if some Federal official is convicted of a crime.

    It should be, but if some of these bad actors are convicted and actually punished in some meaningful way, it will be cause for celebration. Not because we’re glad that someone broke the law, but because justice was actually served.

    • #17
  18. Doug Kimball Thatcher
    Doug Kimball
    @DougKimball

    Don’t you love the term “foxhole feminism?”  It’s one of my better creations, descriptive, apt and provocative.

    • #18
  19. Doug Kimball Thatcher
    Doug Kimball
    @DougKimball

    Trump placed folks diametrically opposed to the current missions of most cabinet departments, the only possible antidote for the Obama transformation.  Had Session not been cowed into stepping aside on the Russia matter  (Senators bow like blades of grass when they hear the whisper “conflict”.)  Otherwise we’d be at the bottom of this mess already.

    • #19
  20. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Doug Kimball: No doubt Hillary, et al., were able to push the State Department further to the left. This was not difficult as the department had always been prone to self-delusion, convinced that they can change the world by talking.

    The political leadership from both parties think they can change the world by talking or by spending money and the State Department’s foreign service  tends to stand in the way and say “that’s a bad idea.”  or don’t do or say that.  After a few decades traveling around the world and seeing how  governments don’t work, including our own, foreign service officer tend to become politically conservative and to appreciate our own constitution and rule of law not men more with each changed tour, and they come to be really skeptical of new big spending initiatives.  That is traditionally the reason new administrations come to thoroughly dislike them.  Of course folks who spend too much time in Europe become acculturated into their elite, but they just live well and carry messages.

    Washington non foreign service  bureaucrats aren’t liberal either. They are inertial, they cover their rears, exercise caution and try to grow their budgets and their power so vote Democrat.  They are the reason the  government’s default position builds the administrative state.  By its very nature government can’t self correct so even the good agencies  need to be cut back from time to time and the rest gutted.     They need to be broken up, moved around and re directed  by new administrations.   A second advantage of this is that Civil Service promotions come from supervisory reach, so to get the good ones to put their shoulders to something new leadership has to offer growth.  So if we gut them at the beginning we get their attention, reshape their focus and can also reward loyalty and effort.   Obama put ideologues in place and they in turn promoted their own kind.  A good 20 to 50 percent reduction would be good for the agencies and the nation. But that’s a separate issue created by the deep corruption and ideological thrust of the last administration.

    • #20
  21. Doug Kimball Thatcher
    Doug Kimball
    @DougKimball

    You may be right with respect to the career diplomats, however the State has always been run by politicos.  It’s the only Department where political payback is expected; people on the team are rewarded with plum assignments and those whose loyalty is suspect, are sent to not really Greenland, the Malarian Islands or Crapolastan somewhere between Russia and all the other ‘stans.  And lead diplomatic posts are gifts, like peerage, bestowed upon the big bundlers.

    • #21
  22. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Doug Kimball (View Comment):
    You may be right with respect to the career diplomats, however the State has always been run by politicos. It’s the only Department where political payback is expected; people on the team are rewarded with plum assignments and those whose loyalty is suspect, are sent to not really Greenland, the Malarian Islands or Crapolastan somewhere between Russia and all the other ‘stans. And lead diplomatic posts are gifts, like peerage, bestowed upon the big bundlers.

    You are right, but most political Ambassadors go to easy places and lead a social life, deliver messages written for them by career officers.  When they take themselves too seriously they can do real damage.  I’ve had some of the same feed back from career Forest Service and BLM officers, the political bag carriers come in at DAS levels having absorbed the campaign spin of the winning party but know nothing.  It’s a real dilemma because all organizations need leadership or there is just careerism and entropy, but the new folks don’t know anything.  Perhaps what this means is that the Federal government is not a useful tool and should be used only when it must be–national defense, foreign policy including foreign commercial policy.  Send the rest to the States and let them abolish them or make them useful.

     

    • #22
  23. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    I thought bureaucrats were supposed to implement the objectives of the current political leadership.

    • #23
  24. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Basil Fawlty (View Comment):
    I thought bureaucrats were supposed to implement the objectives of the current political leadership.

    Bureaucrats serve the bureaucracy. Any benefit accruing to other entities is incidental.

    • #24
  25. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Percival (View Comment):

    Basil Fawlty (View Comment):
    I thought bureaucrats were supposed to implement the objectives of the current political leadership.

    Bureaucrats serve the bureaucracy. Any benefit accruing to other entities is incidental.

    That’s why they’re bureaucrats.

    • #25
  26. Doug Kimball Thatcher
    Doug Kimball
    @DougKimball

    Basil Fawlty (View Comment):
    I thought bureaucrats were supposed to implement the objectives of the current political leadership.

    Right.

    There is perhaps no statute more important in the rise of the bureaucratic state than the Administrative Procedure Act.  This is an FDR era law that places regulation and initial adjudication into the realm of the bureaucracy; that is it circumvents the entire constitutional construct of separation of powers and vests essentially all authority – rulemaking, enforcement, adjudication – in the bureaucrats.  All Congress has to do is point to the agency and they “take it from there.”  The President, as the overseer of all departments, is empowered as he directs all cabinet leadership and positions subject to appointment.  Through appointees and executive orders he can redirect and refocus the entire artifice of governance.  The Congress is happily absolved of accountability having given up any authority over the bureaucracy and unwilling to use its authority to control appropriations and debt, that is, the purse.  And the judiciary is happy to let the bureaucracy do all the heavy oversight lifting, even if the underlying regulations have veered well away from the founding laws to the point of absurdity.  No one complains when massive unaccountable discretion is bestowed upon bureaucrats to provide whatever guidance and regulation is required  to implement the legislative mission.  And the Courts allow this regulation, when challenged, to remain in effect based upon the broadest of language and the thinnest justification in statute.

    The APA needs repeal and a major overhaul.  Congress needs to re-assume its role in making clear and enforceable law and ensuring that these laws are carried out as written.  The bureaucracy needs to be defanged and its ability to write rules needs significant pre-adoption oversight by all three branches of government.  Machinations like the Dreamer Deferral and the CO2 decision should be patently impossible in a proper system of federal governance.  And those caught up in the bureaucratic nightmare should be able to ask for a simple and straightforward appeal within the judiciary system with oversight by judges or arbitrators independent of the bureaucrats who initiated the action.

     

    • #26
  27. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Doug Kimball (View Comment):

    Basil Fawlty (View Comment):
    I thought bureaucrats were supposed to implement the objectives of the current political leadership.

    Right.

    There is perhaps no statute more important in the rise of the bureaucratic state than the Administrative Procedure Act. This is an FDR era law that places regulation and initial adjudication into the realm of the bureaucracy; that is it circumvents the entire constitutional construct of separation of powers and vests essentially all authority – rulemaking, enforcement, adjudication – in the bureaucrats. All Congress has to do is point to the agency and they “take it from there.” The President, as the overseer of all departments, is empowered as he directs all cabinet leadership and positions subject to appointment. Through appointees and executive orders he can redirect and refocus the entire artifice of governance. The Congress is happily absolved of accountability having given up any authority over the bureaucracy and unwilling to use its authority to control appropriations and debt, that is, the purse. And the judiciary is happy to let the bureaucracy do all the heavy oversight lifting, even if the underlying regulations have veered well away from the founding laws to the point of absurdity. No one complains when massive unaccountable discretion is bestowed upon bureaucrats to provide whatever guidance and regulation is required to implement the legislative mission. And the Courts allow this regulation, when challenged, to remain in effect based upon the broadest of language and the thinnest justification in statute.

    The APA needs repeal and a major overhaul. Congress needs to re-assume its role in making clear and enforceable law and ensuring that these laws are carried out as written. The bureaucracy needs to be defanged and its ability to write rules needs significant pre-adoption oversight by all three branches of government. Machinations like the Dreamer Deferral and the CO2 decision should be patently impossible in a proper system of federal governance. And those caught up in the bureaucratic nightmare should be able to ask for a simple and straightforward appeal within the judiciary system with oversight by judges or arbitrators independent of the bureaucrats who initiated the action.

    DACA didn’t arise organically from some faceless bureaucracy; it was imposed from the top by the political leadership. As was its cancellation. I’m more concerned about the judicial abuse that’s attempting to limit Trump’s ability to order the bureaucracy to undo that which it was ordered to do during the Obama years.

    • #27
  28. Doug Kimball Thatcher
    Doug Kimball
    @DougKimball

    Basil Fawlty (View Comment):

    Doug Kimball (View Comment):

    Basil Fawlty (View Comment):
    I thought bureaucrats were supposed to implement the objectives of the current political leadership.

    Right.

    There is perhaps no statute more important in the rise of the bureaucratic state than the Administrative Procedure Act. This is an FDR era law that places regulation and initial adjudication into the realm of the bureaucracy; that is it circumvents the entire constitutional construct of separation of powers and vests essentially all authority – rulemaking, enforcement, adjudication – in the bureaucrats. All Congress has to do is point to the agency and they “take it from there.” The President, as the overseer of all departments, is empowered as he directs all cabinet leadership and positions subject to appointment. Through appointees and executive orders he can redirect and refocus the entire artifice of governance. The Congress is happily absolved of accountability having given up any authority over the bureaucracy and unwilling to use its authority to control appropriations and debt, that is, the purse. And the judiciary is happy to let the bureaucracy do all the heavy oversight lifting, even if the underlying regulations have veered well away from the founding laws to the point of absurdity. No one complains when massive unaccountable discretion is bestowed upon bureaucrats to provide whatever guidance and regulation is required to implement the legislative mission. And the Courts allow this regulation, when challenged, to remain in effect based upon the broadest of language and the thinnest justification in statute.

    The APA needs repeal and a major overhaul. Congress needs to re-assume its role in making clear and enforceable law and ensuring that these laws are carried out as written. The bureaucracy needs to be defanged and its ability to write rules needs significant pre-adoption oversight by all three branches of government. Machinations like the Dreamer Deferral and the CO2 decision should be patently impossible in a proper system of federal governance. And those caught up in the bureaucratic nightmare should be able to ask for a simple and straightforward appeal within the judiciary system with oversight by judges or arbitrators independent of the bureaucrats who initiated the action.

    DACA didn’t arise organically from some faceless bureaucracy; it was imposed from the top by the political leadership. As was its cancellation. I’m more concerned about the judicial abuse that’s attempting to limit Trump’s ability to order the bureaucracy to undo that which it was ordered to do during the Obama years.

    I don’t disagree.  The APA gave this unbridled power to the executive over the bureaucracy, leading to abominations like DACA, and compliant and politicized courts looked the other way at best or lent their support.  There’s no way that the original Immigration Law would have countenanced this kind of blanket, pre-emptive use of executive discretion in enforcement.  The Leftist activist mindset has not only thrown out the constitution, but our statutes as well.  They are allowed to mean whatever they need to mean to justify Leftist action.

    • #28
  29. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Stad (View Comment):

    Doug Kimball: Now they are being painfully exposed and rooted out one by one.

    And hopefully there will be prosecutions . . .

    And hopefully there will be executions.

    • #29
  30. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    The U.S. Congress did a lot to solidify Obama’s transformations when it passed the latest budget bill.

    • #30
Become a member to join the conversation. Or sign in if you're already a member.