Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
In the conservative media entertainment complex, facts simply do not matter. They create a GOPropaganda talking point, often by pulling it out of their rearend, and they stick to it even when all the fact-checkers say they are wrong. See above: facts simply do not matter.
This is how the "big lie" technique of propaganda works. Repeat a lie often enough, and enough of the low information rubes who have heard it repeated often enough on hate radio and FAUX News will start to believe it as fact. "Yeah, I heard that somewhere." It is the business model of the conservative media entertainment complex.
The latest hyperventilating hysteria manufactured by the GOPropagandists of the conservative media entertainment complex is that President Obama is a "dictator" and a "tyrant" because he occasionally issues an executive order to accomplish some policy goal. In the conservative alternate reality, only policies approved by Tea-Publicans in Congress, and endorsed by their conservative media entertainment complex talking heads should ever become law, because only they are entitled to govern. Some of the more extreme Tea-Publicans have even suggested that President Obama should be impeached for issuing executive orders.
In that case, all prior U.S. presidents, excluding William Henry Harrison who fell ill and died only a month into office, should have been impeached as well. The fact is, President Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any of his predecessors.
Steve Benen breaks it down in Defining 'tyranny' down:
The American Presidency Project keeps a running tally of executive orders by president, starting with George Washington. Literally every president (except Harrison, who died a month after his inauguration) has made use of this tool, some more than others.
How does Obama stack up against his modern predecessors? Dan Amira put together a helpful chart over a year ago measuring recent presidents by the number of executive orders issued, and given the excessive, hair-on-fire outrage from Republicans this week, it seemed like it was time for an update.
I put together the above chart showing each president since the beginning of the 20th century and the average number of executive orders they issued while in office. I then ranked them, from least to most. (The data is up to date through last week, so it includes all of Obama’s first five years.) Blue columns represent Democratic presidents; red columns represent Republican presidents.
Franklin Roosevelt was clearly the most ambitious president when it came to executive orders. And who’s the least? That would be Barack Obama, who issued 168 executive orders in his first five years.
All told, Obama has averaged fewer executive orders, per year, than any president in the last 117 years. His totals may yet grow – it’s tough to predict how many orders he’ll issue in his final three years – but at least for now, Republican criticisms about Obama’s excesses aren’t just wrong, they’re demonstrably ridiculous.
With a slightly different calculation (per day average versus per year average), below is the chart featured in Tuesday’s Chart Immitates Life segment on the Rachel Maddow Show: