Incoming Virginia congressman Dave Brat, whose historic GOP primary victory over then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor shook up Washington’s power structure this summer, is blasting President Obama’s executive fiat on immigration reform as "morally vacuous" – while stopping short of calling for impeachment.
Brat’s broadside against what Republicans complain is de facto amnesty for some 5 million illegal immigrants is sure to draw notice inside the Beltway, given the central role immigration issue played in his stunning upset over Cantor.
During his campaign, Brat, an economics professor at Virginia’s Randolph-Macon University, highlighted the economic impact that legalizing 12 million undocumented workers would have on everyday Americans.
He branded Cantor as "The No. 1 cheerleader in the House for amnesty."
In part by linking immigration to a strongly pro-jobs agenda, Brat defeated Cantor by 11 points — despite being outspent by 40 to 1.
In an exclusive interview for the upcoming January edition of Newsmax Magazine, Brat charged that Obama is "invoking feelings and sentiments related to compassion, in order to make an end-run around the rule of law."
Brat stated the president "is circumventing the Constitutional process and the rule of law" by appealing to a sense of compassion that is firmly based in Judeo-Christian ethics.
Brat, who also studied systematic theology at Princeton, took the president to task for talking about what is "good" or "right" without also observing the Judeo-Christian reverence for the rule of law. Cherry-picking some Western values while ignoring others as inconvenient "always ends in morally vacuous terminology," Brat says.
As for whether he will join calls for Obama’s impeachment, Brat says it is too soon to say.
"I’m of the mind you have to first start with the facts," Brat tells Newsmax. "We need the best minds in the country to establish whether this end-run is in fact unconstitutional or not. So you start with that. You go in order:
"So the first thing I want to do is get the best constitutional minds to put that on paper … and let’s prove, and put down concretely, exactly where the president has overreached.
"Once that’s settled," he added, "then we can move on from there. I’m not a constitutional expert, so I want to hear from the best minds on that one."
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