Barack Obama has always cloaked his bully tactics behind a veneer of photo-ops and media complicity portraying him as a caring person. Now that he’s been reelected, any façade he constructed has been jettisoned, and as Senator Lindsay Graham said when informed Obama would select Chuck Hagel as the new Secretary of Defense, Obama has decided his second term will be an “in your face” term.

As Graham noted, Hagel left the mainstream of the GOP years ago:

I like Chuck Hagel. He served with distinction in Vietnam as an enlisted man -- two Purple Hearts. But quite frankly Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream of thinking on most issues regarding foreign policy. He has long severed his ties with the Republican party. This is an in your face nomination of the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel. I don’t know what his management experience is in regards to the Pentagon or global if anyway, so I think it’s an extremely controversial choice … It looks like the second term of Barack Obama is going to be an in your face term.

Hagel has been criticized for stating that the “Jewish lobby” intimidates Congress, lambasting George W. Bush for the troop surge in Iraq, and his soft approach to Hamas and Iran. Graham called Hagel the “most antagonistic secretary of Defense toward the state of Israel in our nation’s history.”

More Graham:

I will continue to support people chosen by President Obama that I would not have chosen. Sen. [John] Kerry [D-Mass.], has a lot of different views than I do. But I respect him, I think he’s a thoughtful man, he’s in the mainstream. I’ll have a hard time voting for anybody to be Secretary of Defense who believes the surge was a foreign policy blunder.  I’ll have a hard time voting for anybody for Secretary of Defense who believes the Iranians are misunderstood.

Is there any surprise that Obama is prepared to run roughshod over the Constitution and any opposition now? The history of Obama and his minions’ thuggery, as powerfully  documented in Ben Shapiro’s new book Bullies: How The Left’s Culture Of Fear And Intimidation Silences Americans, is clear. Graham calls it “in your face,” but it’s more accurately termed “fist down your throat.”