Posted on 01/02/2016 6:03:20 AM PST by cotton1706
Challengers to the Texas Republican establishment have scored impressive victories in the last few election cycles, knocking off several state senators and House members, including a few veteran North Texas lawmakers.
But as the insurgency takes hold in state government, the Republican congressional delegation has been largely untouched.
Most incumbents have easily beaten back challenges from the tea party and other segments of the grass-roots movement, even as their counterparts in state government have suffered humbling defeats.
Activists outside the GOP establishment, successful in smaller legislative districts, haven't figured out how to operate in a larger, more expensive arena that heavily favors incumbents.
"It's a steeper climb," said North Texas tea party leader Ken Emanuelson. "You're seeing a lot of challenges on the congressional incumbents, but the reality is most of them will make it back to their seats."
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Actually I am pretty sure we do know, at least 99% of the time we do. Mia Love joined the GOPe immediately after elected as did most of the new hires.
Just what we need, more civil service drones.
You miss the point.
Who is being brought up as a replacement for Paul Ryan???
“traus is the number one target. He must be removed as Speaker for the conservative movement to pay full dividends. TX voters should demand an unequivocal statement from candidates for the TX House as to whether they will or will not vote Straus in again. They must be gotten on record on this before the primaries.”
That needs to be repeated!
A legislature of thousands is insane and unworkable. There is no way bring back the fantasy of the “citizen statesmen”, vastly expanding Congress certainly wouldn’t do it. Too many of our citizens are idiots who shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
Having them “telecommunicate” would require a constitutional amendment that will never pass.
I could brook a slight increase of the House though.
EXCELLENT STRATEGY
What also should be applied is getting some wealthy conservatives to run, but not necessarily to win. Their job would be to simply help pull the incumbent down to under 50%. That would be kind of a compromise, as many of these people really HATE the Party-Sponsored incumbent, but also don’t want the life-disruption that happens should they win. So they do the next best thing - which is help give the Tea Party candidate a clear shot at the incumbent.
The unworkable part is what is alluring to so many. If Congress is stuck in perennial mire, they can’t screw us over by enacting more horrid legislation. But as I stated, that would then legitimize the President ruling via fiat (pen & phone/executive order) to bypass and enact their own agenda unilaterally.
If folks want to see what a mega-Congress would look like, take a gander at the Senate in Star Wars. Of course, they voted to break perpetual deadlock by “electing” an Emperor.
“If the 30,000 person per Representative were reinstated, giving us a U.S. House of nearly 11,000 members, it would effectively render that body completely useless and UNMANAGEABLE.”
I agree with your last word. People like Pelosi WOULD NOT HAVE A PRAYER at keeping her Dems in line, rather, if they wanted to keep their seats they would be forced to vote as their districts want. Likewise, a Republican voting for Amnesty in a district of 30,000 people would have A MUCH TOUGHER TIME explaining that vote in a small district than a large district.
The people who wrote the Constitution were not idiots, I suspect that they picked the 30,000 number because it was the highest number of people possible to represent and still have personal contact with everyone that wanted that contact. That hasn’t changed, even in 230 years.
Apparently there was some “New Republic” stuff that was cut from the new movie. There was a weird closeup of some chick before she dies, but she was never seen before (horrible editing choice leaving it in then). In a deleted scene she was Leia’s liaison with the Senate.
As I understand basically the Senate was refusing to directly act against the Em...er “First Order”. So yeah, useless bunch of bickering jackholes just the old Senate in the prequels.
Probably the most realistic thing in the movies is how this Galactic Superstate with it’s a huge legislature is unable to function, even to protect itself.
They started to raise the number almost at once. But at the time, of a 30,000 constituency, say less than half that would be males, so you’re down to 14,000 or so who could vote due to gender. Reduce that down even more to those who were qualified to vote due to being landowners, and you’re down to a fraction of that.
Case in point, for Delaware in the first 1789 House election where it was allotted 1 seat, a grand total of 2,059 men cast a ballot (and in those days, that was usually a public display). In 1790, just 501 voted.
The folks that could vote then were those that were the distinguished members of the community, those with an explicit interest in seeing its betterment. Today, close to half the voters are parasites with no other interest than voting themselves money and benefits (to which 1789 voters would be appalled at and would like demand our responsible class revolt over).
I’m personally more concerned over whom casts a ballot today. If you take from the producing class, you have no right to cast a ballot. If you work for the government in any capacity (save military or law enforcement/public safety), you have no business casting a ballot, because you’re voting on your own job. That’s why they did not want Washington, D.C. casting votes, since presumably that’s where government workers would live, and they would no doubt be surprised at the outcome today with allowing them to do so.
When I used the word unmanageable or unwieldy, I do mean it as a negative. You’d think the parties would not be able to control their members, although they’d likely find a way. 30,000 constituents would be like a Councilmanic level office, and even those today feel the pressure to vote like the national parties, and that doesn’t harm them one bit.
You’d also have huge areas of rotten borough districts and virtual “no mans land” areas. Imagine Detroit with 600,000 people having twenty Congressmembers. Ditto Baltimore.
Perhaps once we redefined those that should be able to vote, we can enlarge the House, but quantify that districts should be based upon a number of qualified voters to avoid those aforementioned rotten borough districts where perhaps as few as a dozen voters could elect someone representing 30k. 30,000 member districts should represent 30,000 voters. Doing that would increase the present membership of Congress from 435 to about 4,300+ (before you whittle down the “takers”), in which case by that time you’d have about 2,000+ potential members. That would be large, but far more representative of what you’re advocating.
doesn’t new hampshire have lots of house seats in its legislature? anyway, we expand the number of congressional seats, the justice dept under hillary will demand that those new seats be minority influenced seats. (i.e. dem likely seats).
400. 1 per 3300 people. Only the US House, the UK House of Commons, and the Lower House in India are larger (and maybe China’s puppet legislature).
When the rats won their first modern majority in 2006, several newly elected rats who didn’t expect to win refused to take up their seats.
Not enough of them refused, since they still elected a Dem Speaker.
They had plenty to spare.
Huge turnover in the body lately, huge. Safely GOP for so long, now it can’t withstand a rat carrying the State for President.
“I’m skeptical. Some of the current snakes in power were elected while running as Tea Party candidates. You just never know what living in D.C. will do to a person.”
All tea parties are not created equal...some have been hijacked to push agendas by LOBBYISTS and GOP operatives pushing amnesty and lousy trade deals.
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