New U.S. Senator speaks truth: It’s not “immigration” that’s the problem

Oklahomans have elected a thinking conservative senator in James Lankford

Oklahoma Republican U.S. Rep./Senator-elect James Lankford was among the guests appearing on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace yesterday. He is clearly a man to keep our eyes on. Oklahoma should be commended for sending this thinking conservative to the U.S. Senate.

Lankford responded to a baiting comment from Wallace harkening back to a “government shutdown” as the conversation turned to defunding Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to shove through amnesty for illegals via an executive order. 

LANKFORD: “But people are not pursuing some government shutdown, though. Let me take you back into the Clinton administration. President Clinton put out an executive order and the House voted against that to defund that executive order 417-2. That was in 1998, because it took over power from the legislative branch in the states. I would love to see that bipartisanship again where the Congress steps up and says to a president, you do not have executive authority to do this. You have to do your responsibility. We have to do ours.”

WALLACE: “But I guess what I’m trying to get at and, you know, I fully understand there are a lot of members who say, look, you’ve got to use the power of the purse. That’s your one advantage, your one piece of leverage over the president, to try to change policy. But are you willing to go to possibly shutting down the government to do that? Because it seems — let me — my point is, that regardless of who is responsible on the merits, it seems like Congress gets blamed and the president ends up winning. It certainly happened in October of 2013.”

LANKFORD: “Sure. But, Chris, your assumption is, is that that’s the only option that’s sitting out here, is to be able to shut down government. I just don’t believe that that’s true. I think there are ways to be able to fund everything, and I don’t think the president has the high ground. He has this perception that everyone in the country thinks like him, and that is not correct. I represent millions of people. Tom Cotton represents millions of people. There are millions of people scattered around the United States that think like us, and, though, the president thinks only these few crazy conservatives in Congress think this way and no one else does, he’s misjudged the American people.

Arizonans who don’t hear such cogent truth from their own senators might want to commit these words spoken by newly elected Sen. James Lankford to memory: “The American people really do believe in the rule of law. They don’t have a problem with immigration. They have a problem with illegal immigration. And for the president to step up and say, I’m just going to remove the word “illegal” and to be able to transition this and ignore the law, a lot of people have a problem with that, Republicans and Democrats alike.”

Lankford, who refreshingly campaigned as “a faithful, conservative leader” will fill the unexpired term of retiring Senator, Dr. Tom Coburn, who is sadly battling serious health problems.