The one thing I would change to our Constitution if I had one chance would be one simple thing; term limits for all three branches of government as opposed to the single one we have on the Executive Branch.
As a republican with a small "r" and a democrat with a small "d" you will find fewer people with greater belief in one-man-one-vote (girls and others too) than your rarely humble blogg'r.
That being said, we also have to mitigate the human pattern of going with the same person they have in office, the financial corruption of seniority with fund raising, and the simple fact that the longer someone spends inside the beltway, the less they understand the nation they represent.
Though there was a lot of success this last election getting rid of long-term incumbents - that was the exception and not the rule. For those who keep electing the pork producers, their ability to vote for who they want starts to interfere with everyone's need for good governance. Your local hero becomes my parasite.
The Senate is the worst. Many Senators have a sense of entitlement that mere mortals have trouble understanding. They like their club - and many fail to understand that they are there via the good graces of the great unwashed.
I have no beef against Sen. Lugar (
Even after the midterm rout that will remove many long-serving members from Congress, the idea that Mr. Lugar would be vulnerable to a primary challenge is a chilling notion to many Republicans, a symbol of symbolism gone too far.Who died and made him King, Duke, Earl, or Baron? You can't even challenge him? What?
“If Dick Lugar,” said John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, “having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”
I don't think I need to say more to demonstrate the disconnect from the basics of representative government.
Let him be challenged - we are all improved by competition. If he is good and his ideas sound, then those who are empowered will continue to let him serve. If their party chooses poorly, then they will be punished. Gee wizz .... it is messy. Good. Freedom is messy and inefficient. Good.
You know, "of the people, by the people, for the people" and stuff.
I am a Hoosier, grew up there, milked cows there for 18 years before coming into the Navy, and have voted absentee there for the past 22 years. All my people are there. Senator Lugar is a good man, a respectable man by all accounts. I have known him since I was 17 and a Junior in high school. That being said, he needs to retire. I have no desire to see him defeated in a primary and he will be if he runs because he has lost touch with the issues that are important to Hoosiers. That will be the reason he will be defeated if he chooses to test the electorate again. This is a common sentiment back home.
ReplyDeleteSuch an arrogant attitude should be grounds for immideate removal. It seems that they consider themselves to be our royalty.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't that be (R-IN)?
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Congressional term limits is that they're likely to increase the power and influence of lobbyists and bureaucrats, who are not term limited. Among the most useful commodities in Washington are experience and knowledge with and of the inner workings of the world inside the beltway (these two qualities, with native political acumen, made Lyndon Johnson a force to be reckoned with).
The ultimate difficulty is that experience is largely (though not entirely) relative. The established government and non-government bureaucracies that inhabit and influence Washington would not be term-limited. Neophyte legislators - which all Senators and Representatives would ultimately be by comparison - would be easily swayed and pressured by entrenched interests who know the levers and games of the Washington system. (How often are militarily inexperienced legislators mislead by the obfuscations of misrepresentations of senior officers and other experts today?)
We've suffered for inexperience in Congress (and the executive) before, even before the establishment and entrenchment of our native interests and bureaucracies. The relative inexperience of the Federalists of the late 1790s, for example, allowed Talleyrand to divide their party against itself, weaken US foreign policy, and effect a change of government in the United States to one the French preferred - from a quarter of a world away in an age of limited communications.
"<span>obfuscations or misrepresentations"</span>
ReplyDeleteDr. Freud ... Dr. Freud.
ReplyDelete"That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;
ReplyDelete"That should any form of government become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness."
Just sayin'...
Ah yes, so God forbid the GOP would have someone who did not bow down to our new teabag masters. Where you see arrogance, I see a reasonable sentiment on Danforth's part-and a perfectly understandable disgust at what is taking place in the Republican party today.
ReplyDelete<span><span>The<span> </span><span>GOP</span><span> </span>is now insane. There is no such thing as reasonable conservatives anymore. Call them what they really are, which is enablers.</span></span>
<span>Ah yes, so God forbid the GOP would have someone who did not bow down to our new teabag masters. Where you see arrogance, I see a reasonable sentiment on Danforth's part-and a perfectly understandable disgust at what is taking place in the Republican party today.
ReplyDelete<span><span>The<span> </span><span>GOP</span><span> </span>is now insane. There is no such thing as reasonable conservatives anymore. Call them what they really are, which is enablers.</span></span></span>
People get the government they deserve. In that regard, I would have no desire to invoke any term limits on any office.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't consider myself either a democrat or republican in any sense as if there is any difference between the two parties.
Skippy,
ReplyDeleteUsing the term "God" is now strictly illegal. (See: Pelosi, Nancy, and Progressives, Secular.)
"<span><span><span><span>There is no such thing as reasonable conservatives anymore."</span></span></span></span>
You gotta be kidding.
<span><span><span><span></span></span></span></span>
Sen. Lugar is but an example. One need not look hard to find other notable examples of erstwhile well-intentioned folks who went to Washington and eventually lost their minds, and self-respect, and shame. And there are those because their constituents see in them something lost on the rest of us. What a country! Congressional reform is long overdue. I don't like all of it, but I do like some of what's contained in the Congressional Reform Act draft floating around. I'm not "that" naive to think it'll ever get far, but perhaps our great experiment will continue to evolve toward good, and success, and not be doomed to the historical heap of failed attempts at government by the people, for the people.
ReplyDeleteTerm limits are necessary now. They represent us and we're changing; they are not. Routine flushing of the swamp is probably not a good idea for some of the valid reasons expressed by those here. That said, there is middle ground to be found. It's government work though; it will take time. It feels some days that we're running out of time, but I don't trust those feelings. I have hope that we're not doomed, that we'll survive change. We're due, - maybe overdue, but context or perspective may be found by comparison or contrast to previous decades.
There's a quote somewhere about getting worked up about politicians. It escapes me, but the clock says, "time for work".
Reduce the size and scope of government (I know, I know, pipe dream ...) and the power of staffers and bureaucrats likewise decrease.
ReplyDelete"Teabag", eh. I think you could get your point across using the style ' "Tea Party" ', rather than a slur based on sexual practices most of the people being defamed were unaware existed prior to being so labeled. It leads one to think it is deliberate.
ReplyDeleteThe formula is demean, defame, dehumanize, and then destroy.
It works. It's use corrupts the user and the body politic.
Surely you are smarter than that, being a sophisticated man of the world with superior intellect.
There. See how easy that was?
Not if the deck is stacked against representative government.
ReplyDeleteSkippy, the bon mot was mine. En garde.
ReplyDeleteBy reasonable conservative do you mean the the reasonable, go-along-get-along-slower-socialism pre-1994 Republicans, content to be the minority?
ReplyDeletePass.
The long-term incumbents of BOTH parties need to be turned out.
Yeah, them. Socialist progressive-ish spineless RINOs. They are reasonable.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that all of the effort to pass laws to protect people from themselves ultimately fail. The "deck is stacked" in my opinion because man is of a fallen nature. No amount of legal framework will change that.
ReplyDeleteThe American People are just as much to blame for the mess we are in as the politicians they voted for.
Except that enough of a majority of the governed in places like IL and CA keep electing and re-electing those who prefer to run the state into the ground.
ReplyDeleteThe building of an "election machine" that gives unfair advantage to the incumbent office holder is hardly the direct result of eating the forbidden apple.
ReplyDeleteSenators, three terms. Congressmen, eight.
The building of any mechanism that is ultimately unfair is quite certainly the result of man's fallen nature just as any "fair" system will ultimately be manipulated in ways to unfairly benefit another. Man is not a robot. He is a creature or morality and any system or discipline which ignore such is doomed to fail.
ReplyDeleteBut we do enjoy the bread and circuses.
And in a related item... the Senate just rejected a ban on earmarks.
ReplyDeleteHmmph.
They are... royal arseholes.
ReplyDelete"<span> He is a creature or morality and any system or discipline which ignore such is doomed to fail."</span>
ReplyDeleteWhich is why we have the Constitution.
So Skippy, you're saying that the residents of a state should NOT have the option to mount a primary challenge?
ReplyDeleteOK.
Which is ultimately a piece of paper.
ReplyDeleteIt only works when people act in moral manner.
Scratch a liberal/progressive, find a totalitarian.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I like term limits, how about we go back to a _federal_ republic and have Senators chosen by the State Governments? The direct election of the second house has only encouraged people to think their state doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteSkippy san is so predictable. Much of the time I have to laugh at what he posts on politics. The rest of the time I just shake my head. That such an intelligent man would allow his emotions to run him is hard to understand.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, he's not just wrong about Danforth's blue blood predilictions, he's disgustingly wrong. Lugar is a RINO and deserves to be primaried and defeated. Such people need to be sent home.
I'd limit both houses to 12 years, and never serve again. Let them go home and live under the stupidity they foist on what they see as the hairy unwashed.
That's QM above. I couldn't put my handle in the box for some reason.
ReplyDeleteUnless supported and defended by souls such as we find here. And the Second Amendment.
ReplyDeleteWhen they go into full-scale collapse, they figure it out (Vermont, too).
ReplyDeleteAnd ostensibly by highlighting the "souls such as we find here," you are making a moral judgment on their character and beliefs only proving my point. The Constitution is not a cure all. People make a nation, not some little piece of paper.
ReplyDeleteAn as an aside, my rights to defend myself don't come from the Second Amendment. Instead, such rights are inherent. The Second Amendment only recognizes that which already existed.
If we returned to the original form, there would be nothing stopping individual state legislatures from using a popular vote as the selection mechanism. Note the Constituton doesn't say how the state legislatures should select Senators. :)
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Let the states decide such. Those interested in promoting a state POV (which is greatly needed), would act accordingly.
ReplyDeleteFederal Government keeps bailing out those states though so they keep voting that socialist crap paying for their voting w/ money from other states.
ReplyDeleteHere is the problem with term limits; outsiders telling me who I can vote for.
ReplyDeleteThe founders of our nation modeled our legislative body on the two house model of Britain. One house, the House of Lords, looked at the big picture, the good of the nation. The other branch, the commons, was intensely local.
In a free society we ought to be able to choose who represents us. If me, my brothers and sisters, don't like who is our representative we should turn him out. It should be our decision, not the decision of anybody else. Term limits strips from me the freedom to choose who I pick, because outsiders don't like my choices.
There is also the law of unintended consequences. Down here in Florida we choose term limits. We made lobbyists way more powerful. Sure, the Dempsey Barrons lost their control; but it got handed over to government workers and the big business lobbyists. At least Dempsey had to stand for election every two years.
No, he's not.
ReplyDeleteConservative politicians say one thing, but do another. The night the TV announced Bush beat Gore, I said to my wife, "Well, at least Bush will be good for the economy." She reminds me of that statement at least once a month.
I agree with term limits...one 6 year term for all. However, we also need to eliminate elections and institute a rqandom selection for all these offices.
ReplyDeleteFranklin wanted people to serve then go home, reelection was not considered for the most part. the well consolidated politicos maintain we have term limits...elections.
That hasn't seemed to work very well. As Mark Twain said, America has only one native criminal class...congress. I'm sure he really meant elected officials, not just the congress-critters.
"<span>One need not look hard to find other notable examples of erstwhile well-intentioned folks who went to Washington and eventually lost their minds, and self-respect, and shame.</span>"
ReplyDeleteRandy Cunningham, for example.