This morning, President Trump declared a national emergency. Of course, Trump is the obvious hypocrite:

Repubs must not allow Pres Obama to subvert the Constitution of the US for his own benefit & because he is unable to negotiate w/ Congress.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2014

But how will West Virginian’s Republican representatives, who have previously criticized former president Obama for executive overreach, react to Trump's declaration?

Senator Capito

The gov’t funding deal the Senate just passed makes a significant down payment on @POTUS’ border security goal, and to help further achieve that goal, I plan to support his national emergency declaration. Full statement on the agreement I helped negotiate: https://t.co/ZxllbACmkz

— Shelley Moore Capito (@SenCapito) February 14, 2019

Here is how Capito responded to President Obama’s executive order on DACA in November of 2014:

West Virginia Second District Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito called Obama’s decision “unconstitutional and wrong.”

“These actions by executive order intrude on the constitutional role and responsibility of Congress to write, debate and pass laws. Even President Obama said as recently as last year that he lacked the constitutional authority to take this action unilaterally,” Capito said.

And here she is after Obama’s executive action in 2016 tightening firearms restrictions:

“Like most Americans, I want to prevent future incidents of violence and keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.,said. “Unfortunately, the president has decided to once again circumvent Congress and govern by executive overreach."

Representative David McKinley

McKinley said this last month about Trump declaring a national emergency:

McKinley added if Trump and Congress cannot reach a deal, the president should declare a national emergency and address border security on his own.

“If by next Thursday, there still isn’t a solution, then President Trump could take the issue of border security into his own hands by declaring a national emergency. With that declaration there should be no reason to not re-open the government.”

McKinley, more so that Capito, frequently attacked Obama for executive overreach. From his congressional web page in 2016:

Rep. David B. McKinley, P.E. (R-WV) issued the following statement on President Obama’s executive actions regarding guns:

“Today’s announcement that President Obama will use executive actions to restrict the ability of law-abiding citizens to purchase firearms is just the latest example of massive overreach by this Administration. Whether its guns, immigration, or coal, time and again President Obama has gone around Congress when it suits him, and taken unilateral action based on questionable constitutionality.

And it would be difficult to be any more hypocritical than this McKinley comment on Obama’s immigration policy (emphasis is mine):

West Virginia First District Congressman David McKinley called Obama’s announcement “a divisive, political calculation that will poison the well for his ability to work with the new Congress that will be sworn in just six weeks from now."

“Earlier this month the American people roundly rejected President Obama’s policies by electing a Republican Senate and larger majority in the House. They sent a message that the President must work with Congress. Tonight’s announcement that he will act alone on immigration shows that he wasn’t listening.”

Hypocrisy? What about our local Ogden “newspapers”?

As I’ve written numerous times (see here and here for instance), our local Ogden newspapers made Obama’s “executive overreach” a regular feature of their editorial pages for the eight years of his administration. That criticism ended two years ago; since then, the phrase “executive overreach” has disappeared from their editorial pages as Trump’s executive actions have consistently received praise from their editorials and syndicated columnists.

Will Ogden Newspapers (one of the most pro-Trump newspaper chains in America) support Trump’s action here? It’s hard to believe they would abandon him over something as abstract (and foreign) as “consistency.” I think that it is clear that Ogden believes that "government overreach" can only be practiced by Democrats; I think they’ll join their fellow Republican hypocrites (Capito and McKinley) on this one.