Originally Posted by
DirtyB
That's not exactly how it went down.
You are making it sound like the Republicans passed the UIGEA, and Obama's people were reluctantly stuck enforcing it.
In reality, the enforcement of the UIGEA was done by the US Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York. That particular office has had an obsession with going after well-bankrolled criminal enterprises, busting them, and seizing their massive assets.
That's the way the office was operating when Bush appointees were in charge, resulting in, among other things, the Neteller bust and the pressuring of Anurag Dikshit to pay a gigantic fine.
When Obama took office, he cleaned house, and everyone at that office was fired. He replaced them with his own people. They did not have to operate the same way. They did not have to go after poker with the same fervor, or even really focus on poker at all. They did, because like the Bush appointees before them, that office continued the procedure of going after high-dollar targets. They later upped their game even further by going after the sites themselves, rather than just their payment processors.
Bottom line: If Obama disagreed with the UIGEA, he could have appointed someone who wouldn't have wanted to go after online poker. He didn't disagree with UIGEA, which is why he appointed people very similar to those that were already in place under Bush.
And just in case there's any doubt, when the PPA sent the White House a petition this year, the response clearly stated that Obama does NOT support federal legalization of online poker.
I am not saying that Romney would be a friend of online poker (he wouldn't), but Obama has made his position quite clear on the matter over the past 4 years, and that position opposes it.