The theory of "radical constitutionalism" looks like a bad-faith effort to dress up an unbounded imperial presidency as strict adherence to the Constitution.
The traditional conservative complaint was that 1) the permanent bureaucracy was making decisions that should be made by Congress - in part because legislators didn't want to bother,…
The theory of "radical constitutionalism" looks like a bad-faith effort to dress up an unbounded imperial presidency as strict adherence to the Constitution.
The traditional conservative complaint was that 1) the permanent bureaucracy was making decisions that should be made by Congress - in part because legislators didn't want to bother, and also because they lacked subject-matter knowledge (which conservative critics of the "administrative state" seem to consider unimportant); and 2) courts were letting them do it, instead of adjudicating whether agency decisions conformed to statutory law. In short, the executive branch was usurping legislative and judicial functions.
Another complaint, greatly amplified in the Trump era, was that career bureaucrats, aka the "deep state," were sabotaging the president's agenda. To whatever extent that was happening, MAGAs turned this complaint into the narrative that any impediments to the will of a sociopathic madman - even if it came in the former of actually adhering to the law or following a constitutional process to hold him to the law - was part of an outrageous conspiracy against the "duly elected president." MAGA ideologues basically adopted Trump's belief that he should be free to do whatever he wants, and they packaged it as "the will of the American people."
So they've tossed out any concern about the executive branch infringing on legislative and judicial territory, and they're concocting a "constitutional" justification for a presidency with unlimited power. IMO, Trump's obvious disdain for rules was perhaps the main reason they embraced him so enthusiastically in the first place.
The theory of "radical constitutionalism" looks like a bad-faith effort to dress up an unbounded imperial presidency as strict adherence to the Constitution.
The traditional conservative complaint was that 1) the permanent bureaucracy was making decisions that should be made by Congress - in part because legislators didn't want to bother, and also because they lacked subject-matter knowledge (which conservative critics of the "administrative state" seem to consider unimportant); and 2) courts were letting them do it, instead of adjudicating whether agency decisions conformed to statutory law. In short, the executive branch was usurping legislative and judicial functions.
Another complaint, greatly amplified in the Trump era, was that career bureaucrats, aka the "deep state," were sabotaging the president's agenda. To whatever extent that was happening, MAGAs turned this complaint into the narrative that any impediments to the will of a sociopathic madman - even if it came in the former of actually adhering to the law or following a constitutional process to hold him to the law - was part of an outrageous conspiracy against the "duly elected president." MAGA ideologues basically adopted Trump's belief that he should be free to do whatever he wants, and they packaged it as "the will of the American people."
So they've tossed out any concern about the executive branch infringing on legislative and judicial territory, and they're concocting a "constitutional" justification for a presidency with unlimited power. IMO, Trump's obvious disdain for rules was perhaps the main reason they embraced him so enthusiastically in the first place.