Let's see, it's bad and "lawless" if Obama does the same or similar things that Republicans have done as much or more before him? Seems like a double standard to me, but I guess I need a conservative explanation to understand it properly.
Conservatives howl with outrage at Obama’s delay in enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate for a single year yet Mitt Romney heralded plans, on day one of the Romney administration, to grant waivers from Obamacare to all 50 states. I doubt they would think he was lawless.
Obama extended sign-up for the PPACA without penalty for those who had already started the process until Mid-April. Another "lawless" move? Doesn't seem so to me. In May of 2006, just days before the end of open enrollment, President Bush took administrative action towaive “penalty fees for very low-income seniors and people with disabilities who sign up late” and allowed “the same impoverished beneficiaries to sign up for Medicare drug coverage until Dec. 31.” “In other words, you can apply after May 15th without penalty,” Bush told seniors during an event in Florida. “And that’s important for low-income seniors to understand.” Like Obamacare, the launch of President George W. Bush’s prescription benefit plan was hampered by technical glitches, setbacks, and mass confusion. As the May 15 deadline for enrollment loomed, a bipartisan group of lawmakers advocacy organizations, and a surprising number of newspaper editorials, urged the administration to extend the enrollment period and protect seniors from the penalties associated with late enrollment.
Can the president, say, announce that he would no longer prosecute marijuana or gun-possession crimes? Brett Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee on the federal appeals court in the District of Columbia, wrote recently that the president “has clear constitutional authority to exercise prosecutorial discretion to decline” to bring such cases. Kavanaugh’s position underscores the relative modesty of the Obama administration’s supposedly lawless moves on mandatory minimums and deportations.
Is this the same "lawless" Obama Administration that the House has just not impeached yet and has issued fewer executive orders in the same period of time than Bush did (and most other Presidents in history)? The same Obama that has eschewed Cheney and Bush's Unitary Executive theory and not pursued torture by executive fiat? How about the President that got us out of one war rather than getting us into two?
Even with the President’s recess appointments, Obama has used this constitutional power more sparingly than recent predecessors; President Clinton made 139 recess appointments, President Bush 171 and Obama so far only 32.
It is double standards and political theater or "lawlessness"? You tell me.