On his Tuesday radio show, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh employed a description he borrowed from the PJ Tatler blog to describe Obama’s action toward Arizona in the wake of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision strike down significant parts of that state’s immigration legislation: He’s gone Soviet.
Limbaugh said Obama’s action were punitive.
“The regime is using the Department of Homeland Security to punish Obama’s enemies,” Limbaugh said. “I saw a great phrase at a blog post on PJ Media — Obama went ‘Soviet’ on Arizona. Let me read to you from that post. ‘This is a political maneuver designed to punish Arizona, which had the audacity’ — I mean, what is this really all about? Obama is not enforcing immigration law. Arizona is falling apart. A responsible governor says, ‘All right, well, we’re going to write some laws to give us the ability to enforce the border ourselves.’”
The conservative talker said much of this reaction stems from Obama’s personality.
“You don’t do that to a solipsistic, narcissistic little man-child like Barack Obama. You just don’t do openly challenge the king like this,” he continued. “So Barack Obama turned around and sued Arizona: ‘Who the hell do you think you are? You want to enforce immigration law? Okay, let me show you what’s going to happen to you. I’m going to tell you we’re not going to enforce immigration law, and I’m going to take you all the way to the Supreme Court, and I don’t care what happens to your state.’ And that is exactly what happened. And so Arizona is being punished. Now, they might want to say this is political punishment, but it has real-world consequences.”
This, the radio host said, is proof that Arizona is considered to be out of play for his campaign in the 2012 election and will be made an example of for other border states to see.
“It’s abundantly clear now that Obama has given up winning Arizona,” Limbaugh said. “He doesn’t care. He’s written it off. Now he’s going ‘Soviet’ on it to make an example to every other state, by the way. And do not discount that. This is a message to every other state on the border: ‘The same can happen to you if you try this stunt.’”
“It’s good old fashioned, political, Soviet-style intimidation,” he added. “Barack Obama has kicked Arizona out of whatever is left of the federal government’s border enforcement. And in the process, what has Obama — in real world consequences — just done here? Obama has sent a special delivery FedEx or UPS to smugglers and traffickers and criminals of all kinds that Arizona is wide open.”