[conservatism_IS_compassion]

And when will voters give up their right to vote for senators?

One approach towards that would be to make senators running mates of governors. You run for governor, you name the senator nominee to be your running mate, to a four year term renewable if you as governor do not want to assume the senate seat after four years. Thus, the governor - if he appears in Washington - would be accorded the respect a Senator now gets, because he has a four year senate term in his back pocket.

The senator is still elected, but the governor is also responsible for the senator - so if the governor has a problem with unfunded mandates blowing up his budget and/or “forcing” him to raise taxes, the people’s response would be, "your guy in the senate voted for that mandate, you are the cause of this mess.”

The point is to prevent the separation of responsibility from authority. Grubercrats are all about grabbing authority by the armload - but responsibility? - "it’s Bush’s fault.”

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

“One approach towards that would be to make senators running mates of governors. You run for governor, you name the senator nominee to be your running mate, to a four year term renewable if you as governor do not want to assume the senate seat after four years.”

[Big ‘but’ coming.]

That is a clever idea. Impressive.

Your governor's running-mate could be a nominee for other things. Perhaps a ‘federal judge’ nominee as part of competitive nomination, and that running mate could be mandated to a battery of constitutional debates with gubernatorial judicial running-mates of other states as well as their own.

But as for a non-judicial running mate, we have what I think of as the ‘crowded car’ dilemna. The problem is that our votes are already too watered down due to too many problems to solve with one vote. That's one reason why people cling to their right to vote for anyone they possibly can. It's not even a conscious desire most of the time.

And if the governor runs on a national campaign and state campaign at the same time, then you will encourage lazy voters to vote for senators more often rather than less. ‘Fair weathered friends’ who vote only during fair weather once every four years is part of the problem.

In fact, a future idea I will suggest is quite the opposite, a vote EVERY year right after tax day to consider another budget-cutting group, a national election for the ‘Penny Plan’ committee that could not only cut budgeting, but also could be part of the mandatory debate process, making all nominations [including supreme court] twice as competitive. That way, only the most dedicated of voters would even bother to show up and vote.

But that's not part of the plan posted here.