How Obama frames the Richard Cordray appointment, which is legally questionable:
Ezra Klein provides background and explains why Obama is trying to push through Cordray's appointment and the appointments of three other nominees:
The answer is that, without them, the institutions they're intended to lead will fail. Obama's maneuver was about the agencies, not the appointees. In the absence of a director, the CFPB can't exercise its powers. The expiration of Craig Becker's term on the NLRB, meanwhile, means the board is about to fall from three members to two members — a number that the Supreme Court has ruled is less than a legal quorum, and so a number that means the NLRB cannot make binding rulings. This is not an accident: Republicans have straightforwardly argued that they would obstruct the confirmation of any and all nominees to the CFPB until the Obama administration agreed to radically reform the agency. They were, in other words, using their power to block nominations to hold kill or change agencies that they didn't have the votes to reform through the normal legislative order.
Frum believes both parties are guilty of power grabs:
[Y]es, Obama has here pushed presidential power beyond past limits. But it’s not only presidents who can bend the rules. The Senate has also pushed its powers here beyond the usual limits. The Senate is pretending to be in session when it’s obviously not in session. It is engaging in this pretense in order to use its power over confirmations to negate an agency lawfully created by the prior Congress. Most fundamentally, the Senate here is further extending a weird quirk in its own rules–the quirk that allows individual senators to delay votes on appointments–in ways that allow the Senate minority to impose its will on the whole US government.
First Read thinks Obama is setting himself up to run against Congress:
[I]t is absolutely clear that he and his team want a fight with Congress — and any legal challenge that comes with it. And they've made it clear if they don't currently HAVE a dispute with Congress, they are happy to pick a fight. And this fight, over the Consumer Protection board, has the added benefit of creating an "us vs. them" middle class narrative. After Obama made his recess appointment of Richard Cordray official, the Romney campaign fired off this press release: “This action represents Chicago-style politics at its worst and is precisely what then-Senator Obama claimed would be ‘the wrong thing to do.’ Sadly, instead of focusing on economic growth, he is once again focusing on creating more regulation, more government, and more Washington gridlock.” But the Obama campaign fired back with this: “By opposing the appointment of Richard Cordray to run the first-ever consumer watchdog bureau, Mitt Romney today stood with predatory lenders and Republicans in Congress over the middle class.”
Chait argues that Romney is being baited:
Romney comes from the world of finance, has drawn extremely strong support from finance, and he simply looks like a stereotypical Wall Street shark. If I were Obama, I would want to set up financial reform as the number one contrast issue of the presidential election. Appointing Cordray to the post is a good step to establishing the contrast. And Romney, perhaps still concerned about a conservative primary threat, seems to be walking right into the trap.
Again: the strategic direction and discipline is coming from Obama not the GOP right now. They are in danger of boxing themselves in with a plutocratic candidate in a populist moment.
The Dish 