Posted on 08/11/2004 5:42:04 AM PDT by Mike Bates
Are there any polls out yet ?
For a couple of hundred years, the U.S. Constitution has simply required a senatorial candidate "be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen."
Actually the Constitution provided for the state legislatures to select the senators representing that state. The 17th amendment put an end to that, opening the door to carpetbaggers, professional fund-raisers and individuals of sufficient personal wealth to buy their seat.
CBS 2 Chicago says Obama 67% Keyes 28%.
I've heard of a couple, and Alan's getting creamed. I think he'll pick up steam over the next few weeks. At least I hope so.
The popular election of senators was not a major improvement. For one thing, it reduced the power of the individual states.
One of the biggest mistakes our nation has ever made. The direct election of Senators sounded the final death knell for the concept of federalism.
That could definitely hurt Keyes. Hasn't that been outlawed as "hate speech" in Chicago and other urban centers?
Except for the unelected part you are right. (state legislators are all elected I think) And it has been to the ruination of the Republic and a net loss in state's powers.
Why is a State's power identified by the wishes and interests of its elected officials and not by the wishes and interests of its electorate?
The 17th amendment was ratified in 1913. It is no coincidence that the sharp rise in the size and power of the federal government starts in this year (the 16th amendment, establishing a federal income tax, ratified the same year, was also important). As George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki has noted, prior to the 17th amendment, senators resisted delegating power to Washington in order to keep it at the state and local level. “As a result, the long term size of the federal government remained fairly stable during the pre-Seventeenth Amendment era,” he wrote.
I think the polls should rightly read Obama (number), Republican Candidate (number) because in the public perception they are probably still voting against Ryan. Once they get used to the idea of Keyes and hear what he says, his numbers will definitely go up.
The electorate had their own interests more closely represented, by district, apportioned by population, through their Congressmen. That is why Congressmen have shorter terms than Senators so that the electorate could more rapidly address their ever changing wishes in Congress. Senators were presumed to be chosen for their abilities by a more stable and better informed body than the electorate, the state's legislature. That is what they were hired to do by the electorate. Manage the interests of the state.
Now Senators are hired by the electorate, two per state, no apportioning, and go off to D.C. for six years where they entrench themselves in a self-protecting bureaucracy where they are unanswerable to state officials by censure or recall and nearly unanswerable to the electorate having found an unlimited trough of re-election funds and a good-old-boy re-election support network.
The Senate was to be a check on the House. The House, working directly for the people, would craft laws and treaties and bills. The Senate (which could also do those things) would represent the individual state's interests. The Senate, being longer tenured and more narrowly chosen, was to be the august tempering body that kept the more mercurial, temporal and widely dispersed interests of the House in check.
The state loses power to the feds because they must now grovel at a Congress's feet for authority and money. (One is usually tied to the other it seems.) So now both Senators and Congressmen are elected by popular vote which is fickle, being relatively easily manipulated in comparison to state officials, and self interested rather than interested in the state's sovereignty and welfare.
The 17th Amendment was a bill of goods sold to the people with the basic slogan of the Dems after election 2000; "the people are being disenfranchised." It was a way for the feds to consolidate more power and the people who pushed for it knew that. They were well aware of the maxim of pure democracies, to paraphrase; "once the people find that they can vote themselves largesse from the government they will do so until it is bankrupt." For wannabe petty tyrants that's a great thing. The more instability there is the more power they can assume. It was a major and necessary step towards socialism and the eventual dictatorship that we will have.
Next step: Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations.
Next step: FDR and Supreme Court supremacy.
Actually the 17th Amendment was never legally ratified. Spilled milk now.
LOL. Did you intend that to be funny?
Not to mention sardonic. Thanks.
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