On Sunday, radio host Rush Limbaugh made a rare appearance on television, this time on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace.
During the segment, Wallace asked Limbaugh what the difference was between former President Obama taking executive actions and President Trump ordering a national emergency regarding the southern border.
Limbaugh’s answer is a perfect illustration of one side of the ongoing philosophical debate being waged within the Republican Party between constitutional conservatives and Trump supporting populists.
WALLACE: All right, so I know that you are a constitutional conservative and originalist. Do you really have no problem with President Trump declaring a national emergency and taking money that Congress refused to give him?
LIMBAUGH: You know, no, I don’t. I just listened to your panel and I think so many — it’s all minutia. All you guys were talking about was minutia. Katie Pavlich had it right — we have an emergency. This is an invasion. The very existence and definition of American culture, American society, the rule of law. Why does nobody talk about the fact that millions and millions and millions of people are breaking the law coming here illegally and that the Democratic Party wants that to happen? We can’t have the breakdown of rule of law and law and order this way. That alone would suggest that this has gone on way too long and we need to stop it.
The argument about where drugs come into the country. Can anybody deny that they’re coming in and it needs to be stopped and it’s destroying future generations of the country? We’re so caught up in the game of how Washington debates issues — is this a fact, is that not a fact — it is undeniable that we have a major immigration problem and a political party that needs a permanent underclass of voters that wants that parade of illegal people who are uneducated, don’t even speak the language, they want them here. …
WALLACE: All right … but I want to ask you about the game that you say we play in Washington, because the fact is that when President Obama took executive actions, you were outraged. And, as you would expect, I’ve got a couple of examples of Rush Limbaugh over the years. Let’s put them on the screen.
In June of 2012, when President Obama deferred action against the dreamers you said this: “40 years ago Richard Nixon was hounded out of office supposedly for his illegal actions. And I’m telling you that whatever Nixon did pales in comparison to just this move by Obama today.”
In November of 2014, on reports that Mr. Obama was going to protect millions of parents of DREAMers, you said this: “We can’t just stand idly by and try to find some political opportunity while the president basically shreds the Constitution and flushes it down the toilet.”
So here’s my question, Rush. I understand that you like what President Trump is doing and you didn’t like what President Obama was doing. But I — that’s the concern here, is that to the degree that you give the president more and more powers, yes, you’re going to get some things, executive powers from one president you like, but you’re going to get things, executive powers from another president that you don’t like.
LIMBAUGH: You may look at it that way. I don’t. I look at it as right and wrong. And what Obama was doing was furthering this existing problem in a — he was politicizing this, using whatever executive powers he wanted to use. Yes, I objected to that, but primarily because of what he was doing with these executive powers. He was taking action that I deemed to be harmful to the country. I look at what Trump is doing as something he has to do because he’s not getting any cooperation. …
So, to me, all of this boils down to where the heck are we going as a country and what kind of country are we going to have. And if anybody is willing to go to the limit to make this country remain as founded, they’re going to have my support.
Several conservative thought leaders in the Republican Party have voiced concern over the president’s actions. As The Daily Wire previously reported, Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) both released cautionary statements prior to President Trump’s announcement that he planned to declare a national emergency.
Rubio stated that while there is indeed a “crisis at our southern border … no crisis justifies violating the Constitution.”
He continued:
Today’s national emergency is border security. But a future president may use this exact same tactic to impose the Green New Deal. I will wait to see what statutory or constitutional power the President relies on to justify such a declaration before making any definitive statement. But I am skeptical it will be something I can support.
Cruz noted that it was the intransigence of Democratic leadership that forced Trump’s hand. However, he added “that every president, Republican or Democrat,” should “be bound by the Constitution and federal laws.” Like Rubio, Cruz said that he would have to analyze the situation as it developed.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said that “extraconstitutional executive actions are wrong, no matter which party does them.” Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) said that while Trump’s national emergency declaration appears to be legal, “whether or not it should be legal is a different matter.”
On the other side of the issue, Republicans like Rush Limbaugh are championing the president’s emergency declaration because it will allegedly move the country in the right direction by fixing a major problem, despite its extraconstitutional nature.