Pat Robertson accused President Obama of being a “dictator” today on The 700 Club for his recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after Senate Republican obstructionism, who refused to confirm anybody to the position. Robertson and other critics claimed that the Senate is actually not in recess because of pro forma sessions, but legal experts and even Republican legal advisers have argued that such appointments are constitutional because pro forma meetings where no work is being done are not the same as a Senate sitting in session. Past presidents have also made such appointments. Robertson, who is certainly not the first Religious Right leader to call Obama a dictator, said that Obama “is power-hungry and he wants to take it all,” lamenting, “I didn’t know we were electing a dictator.”
Robertson: I didn’t know we were electing a dictator, I thought we were electing a president who had constitutional powers, and we have shared governmental responsibility between the Senate and the House and the courts and the president, and that division has worked very well in our history. So suddenly you’ve got somebody who is power-hungry and he wants to take it all. There’s no question there’s got to be a challenge to this.
