Top Five Things That Conservatives Have Flipped On to Support Donald Trump

3. Limits on executive authority

Conservatives these days are downright giddy over Donald Trump’s executive orders. Even “The Great One,” Mark Levin, is loving it.

The production of Left/Right hypocrisy memes regarding executive orders may be the number one industry in America right now. Yes, conservatives howled at Barack Obama’s use of the pen while progressives cheered him on. And now progressives are wailing over Trump’s use of the executive order while conservatives celebrate.

Everyone ought to read executive orders just to get a feel for how autocratic they are. They’re written in the first person and speak of problems that the president himself has identified and how he’s going to make up some new rules to solve them. Then comes a list of the presidential edicts. Executive orders are kind of creepy in a representative democracy. They’re kingly. Bigly.

While I don’t mind the use of executive orders that relate to the management of departments that report to the president, or to reverse prior executive orders where a former president has overstepped his constitutional authority, I do mind the use of them to make new laws and sweeping policy.

I understand that many Americans want a wall along the southern border, but a lot of Americans don’t. The wall will cost an enormous amount of money, and the Constitution says that the House of Representatives holds the national purse strings, so the executive order to pay for and build the wall is way out of line, in my view. This should be taken up legislatively.

Remember when Obama used executive orders because he couldn’t get his agenda through Congress? As Ronald Reagan famously said, “There you go again…”