An interesting article…

…The stakes in this year’s election could not have been higher. Had Hillary Clinton won, she would have made permanent Obama’s radical changes. She would have done this not through Congress, but through the judiciary which she would have packed with even more doctrinaire “living constitution” Leftists who would have given their imprimatur to all of Obama’s executive overreach and the even more imperial power grabs that were certain to have accompanied Clinton. It would have rendered Congress as unnecessary as the Russian Duma. The irony is lost on the American Left, for whom Vladimir Putin has become this year’s bogeyman, that they have such similar ideas about presidential power.

But Clinton did not win the election. Donald Trump won. And Republicans maintained control of both houses of Congress and expanded their advantage in the states, now controlling 33 governorships and 67 of 98 state legislative chambers—a level of dominance not seen in nearly a century for the GOP. The challenge for Republicans will be to govern effectively and meet the needs of the people who have placed so much trust in the party. But Republicans have taken the time to educate and persuade the people upon whom they have built a surprisingly effective electoral coalition. What is more, grassroots organizations have been active at the state level on issues like abortion, criminal justice reform, and immigration.

Too often successful state laws were challenged by a hostile Obama Administration and overturned by liberal judges. With a Republican president and, one hopes, more judges devoted to the Constitution, those efforts will enjoy broader support. Trump will become president on January 20 and while the significance of that cannot be underestimated, it is more important to realize that he is the tip of the iceberg. The much larger mass of the Republican Party is below the surface—in Congress, in governors’ mansions and state legislatures, and in grassroots organizations throughout the country that have worked within the system to build consensus and pass laws. That’s the way the system is supposed to work. Republicans have done it the hard way, but it’s also the only way to build anything that lasts.

The Left, in its hurry to realize the next new thing has no patience for that. Impatient as their historicist ideology makes them, they have built their house on sand. Most of what Obama accomplished was ephemeral and will be gone before winter turns to spring. The only things that will remain are an additional $10 trillion in debt, his anti-constitutionalist judges, and a dog’s breakfast of foreign policy disasters that someone else will have to clean up.

After undoing Obama’s executive actions, Trump will enact his agenda through Congress. That will make it be more durable—and more likely to transform America. Obama might be remembered, but his political legacy will fade like memories of a summer fling. And he will become the president that never was.