Posted on 05/15/2015 12:21:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Candidates of the left, right and center have something in common: They all want to be seen as populists. Hillary Clinton attacks income inequality and issues booklets showing how well she stacks up, even against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as a booster for the embattled middle class; Sen. Marco Rubio invokes the American dream; Mike Huckabee and putative libertarian Sen. Rand Paul are against giving President Obama a free hand to negotiate the Pacific trade pact.
Meanwhile, pundits and journalists prowl for populists everywhere: Sen. Ted Cruz is a “populist egghead.” Rubio showcases “populist themes” of up-by-the-bootstraps success. Huckabee is going “full populist.” And Paul’s “populist country music video” blamed banks and Washington for lost jobs. The only top-tier contender seemingly unlinked to populism is Jeb Bush — son of one president, brother of another, backed by establishment heavies — although even his approach has been labeled “populist,” too.
Yet these aren’t modern versions of William Jennings Bryan, fiery crusaders jousting on the campaign trail, railing against politicians who “only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous” and thereby “crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I think what most voters want is pretty simple, they want their representatives to do their jobs and vote their districts. Washington has gone so far into the weeds that such a concept is very foreign to their sensibilities and viewed as some sort of gathering storm among the peasants.
We are their bosses, not wretched supplicants, this apparently needs to be clarified.
Robespierre was a populist....Let that sink in.
As were Mao, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and Pol Pot, among others.
and we are those whoshall be "governed".
Governed by what though? Stuff we can agree on or the whims of an aristocracy?
If Rubio’s a “populist” I’m the King of Spain.
Yup!
Just “governed”. They love to use that word when referring to us. They have power over us now. We are not a constituency. We are the governed. The Constitution is dead. They may pretend it still exists but it does not.
Seems to me we might be due for a good old fashioned election day purge...
We shouldn’t wait for elections. And an election won’t change anything anyway. Besides elections are about which party can cheat better than the other. We are so very screwed.
Populism = emotion.
Populism is Tyranny’s driveway.
I’m not a fan of fatalism. So much of the time people want to research their votes but have no idea how to do that. Just disseminating contact info and an events calendar which includes debates in your own back yard will make a bigger difference than you would believe. Votes on important bills are also needlessly obscure, so just keeping a tally and distributing the well documented results when most people start figuring out that they should take such things into account can spread like crazy.
I can surely appreciate your hopefulness and encouragement. :)
If he is, I won't vote for him.
But I think they're full of crap.
In fact, populism (really, direct democracy) is worst than oligarchic or monarchic tyranny. One tyrant or a few tyrants can be shot through the brain or have their necks stretched, and they are no more trouble to anybody. But a mob of 300 million people telling the minority that their lives and property are forfeit on the outcome of a vote? That is utterly devilish, and is exactly what our Founders sought to prevent.
Spot on.
The point of our Constitution is to provide multi-level CHECKS on a LIMITED amount of democracy, lest it get out of hand (well, it has) and become utter tyranny. Direct democracy? Demon-spawn, that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.