Rush Limbaugh is suggesting that President Barack Obama and his political operatives already are laying the groundwork for a third term.
“You have to wonder if Obama is just trying to lay a foundation for not being a hypocrite when he tries to serve beyond 2016,” Limbaugh told his national radio audience. “I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the next number of years there is a move on the 22nd Amendment.”
Limbaugh has a point.
Upon Obama's taking office, Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., introduced legislation in the House to repeal the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which limits presidents to two consecutive terms or 10 years in office. Serrano’s justification for the bill is that, until 1951, nothing prevented a president from serving more than two terms.
Additionally, a grass-roots movement is under way to make Obama's third term possible. A Web site, End22.com, is dedicated to abolishing the 22nd Amendment and is asking supporters for donations to make it happen.
"We are wise enough to choose our own leader and to decide how long that leader will serve," the Web site states, noting there was nothing in the original Constitution of 1787 that barred a third or fourth term for presidents.
"With our current crises, the American People need to take back their right to elect the leader of their choice. The task is too large and the risk is too great. We must act now!"
Limbaugh acknowledged that Obama may not try to repeal the amendment on his own.
“He may not openly try to change the Constitution. But there might be this movement in the country from his ‘cult-like’ followers to support the notion that a democratically-elected leader who is ‘loved’ and ‘adored’ has carte blanche once elected — just serve as long as he wants because the people demand it, because the people want it, because the people love it.”
Limbaugh said Obama has sympathy for dictators; he relates to them. He inherited his father's Marxism.
“I wouldn't put it past Obama to be plotting right now how to serve beyond 2016, and I think [that’s the reason for the] way he's reacting to what's happening in Honduras. They've got a constitution. They’re a democratically elected set of officials down there, and you had a guy running the country, Mel Zelaya, who was just going to basically rip that country's democracy to shreds and the country moved in to stop him from doing it. And Obama sides with the guy who wanted to rip up the constitution.”
Limbaugh said Obama sides with other dictators in the region, as well, and “is nothing if not a hardcore liberal, always more sympathetic, appearing to side with the bad guys on the world stage.”
Limbaugh described Obama's followers as a “cult-like bunch” whose “attachment to him is not political, it's not ideological, it is not issue-wise. It is cultish. It includes a wide percentage of minorities who, for different reasons, will come to think that he simply cannot be replaced.
“[If he] succeeds with amnesty, for example, and all the illegal aliens are instantly made citizens — he'll be too important. Just like right now — he's too big to fail as far as the drive-bys are concerned; he's too important to be replaced. No one else can lead the nation, they will say.”
During a news conference Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked whether Obama supports Serrano’s House Joint Resolution No. 5, which, if passed, could lead the way for an Obama run at a third term. It was noted that Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., also supports repeal of the amendment.
“You're going to find I tend to get it mixed up with House Joint Resolution Four and Six,” Gibbs said, to laughter from the press corps.
“I think the president is firmly in support of an amendment that would limit his time in the presidency to eight years if he's given that awesome responsibility by the American people.”
But Limbaugh disagrees.
“Anybody who thinks [Obama] intends to just constitutionally go away in 2016 is nuts. I think that's what all this ACORN stuff is all about. I think given ACORN money and fraudulent voter registration — whatever it's going to take — these are people who seek power for reasons other than to serve. They seek to rule.”
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