Surprise! It's not about you. It's about the people you represent.
What a novel idea. Just a minute...let me sit down and ponder that. Wow.
Professor Turley ALMOST gets it right. Almost. For a liberal professor he gets closer than I could have hoped, but -- like a liberal -- felt compelled to throw in the assurance that he simply LOVES Obama and agrees with virtually everything he wants to do, just not how he wants to do it. The reason this distinction is so important, he warns chillingly, is that if Obama can do what he wants now, then we might someday get some right-wing asshole in the presidency who will find it possible to do what HE wants and, of course, we all know that would mean undoing all the wonderful, miraculous, life-changing, earth-saving good stuff the liberals have done.
HOLY CONSTITUTION, BAT MAN!
So his argument breaks down to this: the only real reason we must now constrain the illegal, dangerous overreach of someone as luscious and godlike as President Obama is that we won't always enjoy such amazing awesomeness in the White House and we'll for damned sure want to be able to slap around some future president if -- GASP! -- America is stupid enough to ever again elect a conservative.
So the power of the legislature must be protected for the progress of liberalism!
FORWARD, COMRADES!
Of course, this dire warning about the remote possibility of ever seeing another Republican president...and I mean one who actually IS a Republican and not a RINO like McCain or even Romney...is laughable when you see the siege of illegals at our borders, the power of the IRS, the spying of the NSA, the refusal to allow even the slightest oversight of voter registration rolls, or the full court press resistance to the implementation of voter ID laws. Give it another year and the Democrats will have locked up the political power in this country for the rest of its history.
Honestly, when you are "fundamentally transforming" America, isn't it kind of important that you look down the road a wee bit and plan to KEEP the reins of power to insure your transformation is left completely intact...no matter what?
These guys may be dumb...but they're not stupid.
H/T: Small Dead Animals
The trick was that they were supposed to act to protect their own power and that would result, as a byproduct, in protecting the people by preventing too much power from accumulating in any one branch. Self-interest harnessed to the general welfare. Clever buggers those founders.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, they worked out that they could protect themselves pretty well by handing most of the responsibility for the details of the laws over to the bureaucrats of the administrative branch. So the more nebulous Congress as a whole or "government" get the blame but individual incumbents still get reelected time after time.
The biggest event that set all that in motion, IMHO, was the 17th Amendment, which allowed for the direct, popular election of Senators. Here was a deliberative body of statesmen, appointed by their individual states to represent the STATE'S interests against the Federal government, slated to serve a full six years (longer than any other elected body), suddenly set free of any real consequences for selling out their constituents back home. It effectively transferred the entire Senate to the Federal gov. The House was sure to follow. And, yes, governing through bureaucracies absolves all of the rats from direct responsibility. That's all part of it. If no one is really responsible, then everyone gets re-elected...and the cocktail parties never end.
DeleteOh yes. Actually that's part of something that's annoyed me for years. The idea that Senators are great statesmen, a cut above the common rabble of the House. Sorry guys, that was thrown away with the passage of the 17th you ain't better than anybody.
Delete