The President of the U.S. can and should shut down the G.O.P. as a counterproductive, delusional and disloyal organization. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
By its terms the First Amendment restrains only Congress, and by way of the 14th Amendment state legislatures. Could Obama issue an executive order forbidding the Republican Party to speak on behalf of its candidates? Could he issue an order forbidding Republican candidates to campaign on their own behalves? This would save a lot of agony of government gridlocked by people who can barely read and write, and who think dinosaurs walked the earth with man. To think that these people can come anywhere near the halls of government is scary.
During 1952 Truman seized the steel mills to avoid national paralysis during the Korean War and to help the workers fight the plutocrats who were using the war as cover for freezing their wages. This was challenged in Court. Though the U.S. Supreme Court struck this down, Justice Jackson, in his famous concurrence, hinted that Congressional inaction could pave the way for presidential action.
In Youngstown Sheet & Tube & Co. v. Sawyer (link to decision), 343 U.S. 579 (1952) Justice Jackson stated:
The opinions of judges, no less than executives and publicists, often suffer the infirmity of confusing the issue of a power's validity with the cause it is invoked to promote, of confounding the permanent executive office with its temporary occupant. The tendency is strong to emphasize transient results upon policies -- such as wages or stabilization -- and lose sight of enduring consequences upon the balanced power structure of our Republic.
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When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least, as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables, rather than on abstract theories of law.
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But I have no illusion that any decision by this Court can keep power in the hands of Congress if it is not wise and timely in meeting its problems. A crisis that challenges the President equally, or perhaps primarily, challenges Congress. If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that "The tools belong to the man who can use them." We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers.
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The essence of our free Government is "leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the law" -- to be governed by those impersonal forces which we call law. Our Government is fashioned to fulfill this concept so far as humanly possible. The Executive, except for recommendation and veto, has no legislative power. The executive action we have here originates in the individual will of the President, and represents an exercise of authority without law. No one, perhaps not even the President, knows the limits of the power he may seek to exert in this instance, and the parties affected cannot learn the limit of their rights. We do not know today what powers over labor or property would be claimed to flow from Government possession if we should legalize it, what rights to compensation would be claimed or recognized, or on what contingency it would end. With all its defects, delays and inconveniences, men have discovered no technique for long preserving free government except that the Executive be under the law, and that the law be made by parliamentary deliberations. Such institutions may be destined to pass away. But it is the duty of the Court to be last, not first, to give them up.
The President showed some courage in freeing immigrants who had to duck and hide fleeing INS. Since these immigrants can't vote, I think Obama needs to, at least for the time being, shut down the G.O.P. Or at least stop it from doing any more damage.