Will: Recent maneuvers by Democrats amount to 'cynical lawlessness'

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George Will on 'cynical lawlessness' of ObamaCare delay

2015 health plan enrollment window now after election

Recent maneuvers on health care and the filibuster procedure amount to a "cynical lawlessness" on the part of Democrats, syndicated columnist George Will told Megyn Kelly Friday on “The Kelly File.”

The discussion came on the same day that the administration announced that 2015 open enrollment in ObamaCare will be pushed back until after the 2014 midterm elections, and one day after Senate Democrats diminished the power of the chamber’s minority in blocking presidential judicial appointments.

“There is a kind of lawlessness here, and it’s cynical lawlessness,” Will said. “As the president continues to waive this and suspend that, and exercise what he calls ‘enforcement discretion,’ the American people are beginning to feel the law is in constant flux. And if the law is in constant flux … there is no law.”

Will tried to put recent events in a historical perspective.

“What is going on is the fulfillment of a progressive dream now 100 years old,” he said. “One-hundred years ago, we were in the first year of the first progressive Democratic president, Woodrow Wilson. … He said the very separation of powers is inappropriate for the modern age, because for America to be governed, it needs to have more power concentrated in Washington, more and more Washington power concentrated in the executive branch, and more and more executive branch power concentrated in executive agencies immunized from control or even supervision and oversight by Congress.”

The “marginalization of Congress” has thus been a constant goal of progressives, Will continued.

“This is why conservatism, modern conservatism, was really born in reaction to a strong executive in Franklin Roosevelt during the New Deal and a strong executive of Lyndon Johnson during the Great Society.”

The success of Ronald Reagan helped conservatives shed some of their distrust in a strong executive branch, Will said, but he suggested that recent events could change that.

“At that point they began to lose some of their suspicion of executive power, which I hope they are now reacquiring,” Will said.