Picture in your mind’s eye a day when GOP senators ignore the only slightly veiled public threats of the president and the rants of a corrupt media. Imagine a Democrat senate judiciary committee chairman who privately, quietly, lets the president know that any judicial nominee with the slightest history of opposition to the 10th Amendment will be rejected for a seat on the federal bench.
These are all possible.
Among the senate’s unique duties is that of consenting or not to presidential secretarial, judicial and ambassadorial nominees. As opposed to what the left-media and Dingy Harry would have us believe, the senate doesn’t exist to rubber-stamp and legitimize whatever Obama wishes to do. The constitutional appointments clause is there to make sure that unlike King George III, our president does not appoint unqualified hacks loyal to him and him alone. It is there to make sure a second set of eyes scrutinize the character and suitability of presidential nominees.
But if that is so, if the senate is to rationally and impersonally examine and judge the suitability of nominees, why do they, with rare exception, consistently consent to progressives, to radical left judges hostile to the constitution?
The answer is that as opposed to the constitution of 1787, today’s constitution encourages majoritarian despotism. As head of his party, the president has enormous influence over the disbursement of senatorial campaign funds to party members. It is why senate democrats can be trusted to vote exactly as they are told to by Obama’s assistant, senator Harry Reid. GOP senators also work in fear. They must gauge the effect a frenzy of hyped-up media opposition could have on their reelection. In short, the senators of the party of the president are his tools, while the senators of the opposing party fear crossing the popular culture. Left out of their joint concern is the long term welfare of the people and states they supposedly represent. Senators more concerned with Obama and his media cannot perform their constitutional duties.
Over the generations, Americans have become ignorantly comfortable with this corruption of republican government. Low information voters reflexively think democracy is just swell, when in actuality, too much of it is toxic to our freedoms. Our framers’ system featured only one popularly sourced institution, the house of representatives. For a hundred and three years we have had two such bodies, and if progressives get their way, presidential elections will soon be popularly derived as well.
An over-abundance of democracy is strangling what remains of our republic. It is time to step back and look objectively at what ails us. The source of our sickness, the open and self-inflicted wound that welcomed the bacteria of democratic majoritarianism to grow in a once healthy body politic is the 17th Amendment. If we are to possibly return to free government, senators must once again be immune from popular emotions and demagogic presidents. The 17th must go.
We are the many; our oppressors are the few. Be proactive. Be a Re-Founder of the American Republic. Join Convention of States. Sign our COS Petition.