Washington Post Challenges President

"That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want."

--Barack Obama (2.10.14)

President Obama’s imperial style is drawing notice from even his friends. In an editorial that raised eyebrows around the nation’s capital, the Washington Post chided Obama with these words:

The Obama administration on [2.10.14] announced that it was delaying, once again, enforcement of the [Obamacare] “employer mandate”[, continuing] President Obama’s increasingly cavalier approach to picking and choosing how to enforce this law. Imagine how Democrats would respond if a President Rand Paul, say, moved into the White House in 2017 and announced he was going to put off provisions of Obamacare he thought might be too onerous to administer.

Stressing the law says business must provide health coverage to full-time employees by January 1, 2014 or pay fines, the editorial noted the administration last summer delayed enforcement for a year. Now, they have changed the rules again, giving medium-size businesses another year before they face fines, and lowering the coverage target for large businesses, actions the editorial says that delay any Obamacare “bad press or bad feelings” until after the 2014 election.

According to the editorial:

the administration is unilaterally making distinctions between large businesses and medium ones; the latter group, which will get hit hardest and scream loudest when [fines kick] in, will be treated more leniently. The law is also explicit that the government should be enforcing penalties already; that’s . . . Congress’s intent. The administration shouldn’t dismiss that without exceptionally good reason. Fear of a midterm shellacking doesn’t qualify as good reason . . .Congress should repeal the employer mandate. Until then, the president should implement the law.

Is the Washington Post slowly edging out of Obama’s camp? We just covered the Post’s Chuck Lane’s assault on public sector unions, an Obama coalition core component. And it’s my belief the Post’s power-crazed home town watches the “RealClearPolitics” combined presidential job approval rating the way stock brokers follow the Dow. So it’s no coincidence that the day the Post ran its blast at Obama’s “increasingly cavalier approach” to following the law, the president’s job approval score was again negative by double digits.

We noted as early as last November that Washington is already treating Obama as yesterday’s news. It’s on to Hillary 2016.