President Barack Obama’s forthcoming executive order on immigration, to be announced Thursday, could protect as many as 3.5 million immigrants from deportation. But his critics, mainly but not exclusively on the right, say he's overstepping his political and legal bounds. That's a polite way of characterizing the reaction, anyway. Here are all the new, unflattering titles that conservatives have bestowed on Anything-But-President Obama.
Monarch
Sen. Ted Cruz: “Undeterred, President Obama appears to be going forward. It is lawless. It is unconstitutional. He is defiant and angry at the American people. If he acts by executive diktat, President Obama will not be acting as a president, he will be acting as a monarch.”
Caesar
Mark Krikorian: "Whatever their merits, the Reagan and Bush measures were modest attempts at faithfully executing legislation duly enacted by Congress. Obama’s planned amnesty decree is Caesarism, pure and simple. 'Precedent' isn’t the right word for the Obama crowd’s invocation of Reagan. The right word is 'pretext.'"
Dictator
Rep. Michele Bachmann: “He’s a dictator now. He’s making up the law as he goes along.”
Emperor
John Boehner spokesman Michael Steel: "If 'Emperor Obama' ignores the American people and announces an amnesty plan that he himself has said over and over again exceeds his Constitutional authority, he will cement his legacy of lawlessness and ruin the chances for Congressional action on this issue—and many others."
Authoritarian
Lou Dobbs: Obama's immigration overhaul is "evidence of his unilateral, even occasionally authoritarian inclination."
King and Autocrat
Sen. Rand Paul: "The president acts like he's a king. He ignores the Constitution. He arrogantly says, 'If Congress will not act, then I must.' These are not the words of a great leader. These are the words that sound more like the exclamations of an autocrat."
