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The Final Repudiation (George Will)
Newsweek ^ | Nov 17, 2009 | George F. Will

Posted on 11/11/2008 6:53:57 AM PST by bamahead

In a Presidential contest replete with novelties, none was more significant than this: A candidate’s campaign—for his party’s nomination, then for the presidency-was itself virtually the entire validation of his candidacy. Voters have endorsed Barack Obama’s audacious—but not, they have said, presumptuous—proposition, which was: The skill, tenacity, strategic vision and tactical nimbleness of my campaign is proof that he's presidential timber.

Because imitation is the sincerest form of politics, the 2008 campaign will not be the last in which such a proposition is asserted. Obama’s achievement represents the final repudiation of the Founders’ intentions regarding the selection, and hence the role, of presidents...

James W. Ceaser, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, writing in the Claremont Review of Books, notes that, contrary to conventional understanding, the Constitution created not three but four “national institutions.” They are the Congress, the Supreme Court, the presidency—and the presidential selection system, based on the Electoral College. “The question of presidential selection,” Ceaser writes, “was just that important to the Founders.”

Under their plan, the nomination of candidates and the election of the president were to occur simultaneously. Electors meeting in their respective states, in numbers equal to their states’ senators and representatives, would vote for two people for president. The electors’ winnowing of aspirants was the nomination process. When the votes were opened in the U.S. House of Representatives, the candidate with a majority would become president, the runner-up would become vice president. If no person achieved a majority of electoral votes, the House would pick from among the top five vote getters. Note well: The selection of presidential nominees was to be controlled by the Constitution.

The Founders’ intent, Ceaser writes, was to prevent the selection of a president from being determined by the “popular arts” of campaigning, such as rhetoric...

(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: election2008; lp; obama; president; vichyrepublican; will
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To: bamahead

part owner of the Orioles? Nuff said.


21 posted on 11/11/2008 8:30:52 AM PST by lmc12
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To: TheDon

Correction - a black leftist racist thug with lots of foreign money, the MSM drooling and quivering on his behalf, and powerful “friends” behind the scences. Oh, and ACORN.


22 posted on 11/11/2008 8:40:10 AM PST by little jeremiah (Leave illusion, come to the truth. Leave the darkness, come to the light.)
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To: bamahead

So George Will produces a profoundly conservative essay, and he gets bashed by most of the posters on this thread.

The irony never ceases!


23 posted on 11/11/2008 9:02:14 AM PST by Hawthorn
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To: IoCaster
Shut up George... To ignore the DBMs role in selecting and electing this Marxist street punk is to be willfully blind to reality.

You obviously didn't read the story.

24 posted on 11/11/2008 9:06:58 AM PST by Ron Jeremy (sonic)
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To: Hawthorn
The irony never ceases!

It's very clear all that they read was the headline, and assumed he was bashing the McCain campaign. The grandiose display of ignorance amazes me sometimes.

25 posted on 11/11/2008 9:08:44 AM PST by Ron Jeremy (sonic)
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To: dirtboy
It bears repeating:

"You have a lot of gall mentioning the intent of the Founders when you actively trashed the only person on either ticket who had ANY grasp of originalism."

26 posted on 11/11/2008 9:14:33 AM PST by cookcounty ("A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built." ---Governor Sarah Palin)
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To: Ron Jeremy

George bashed the McCain campaign during the campaign, which is when it mattered.

Some fought for originalism. George Will did not.


27 posted on 11/11/2008 9:16:35 AM PST by cookcounty ("A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not why the ship is built." ---Governor Sarah Palin)
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To: Hawthorn; Ron Jeremy

Spot on, Boyz! HEAR! HEAR!


28 posted on 11/11/2008 9:17:14 AM PST by DCPatriot ("It aint what you don't know that kills you. It's what you know that aint so" Theodore Sturgeon))
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To: Hawthorn
So George Will produces a profoundly conservative essay, and he gets bashed by most of the posters on this thread.

That's like Ray Nagin crafting workable evacuation plans for NOLA after Katrina hit.

29 posted on 11/11/2008 9:21:51 AM PST by dirtboy
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To: AmericanVictory
But is he not right about demagoguery and mob rule and the erasure of republicanism as the Founders conceived it in favor of pure democracy that inevitably moves toward dictatorship?

Coming after his non-stop trashing of Sarah Palin, who adheres rigorously to her state Constitution even when it runs counter to her personal views, I find his Constitutional ethics quite situational and come into play only when his priggish sensitivities are offended. Otherwise, he'd probably be quite happy to have a monarchy here.

30 posted on 11/11/2008 9:24:00 AM PST by dirtboy
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To: Hawthorn

Yeah - I have to agree with this particular essay. It’s easy enough to say without declaring he’s my personal savior, which he isn’t.


31 posted on 11/11/2008 9:31:38 AM PST by Clinging Bitterly (Starve the beast.)
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To: cookcounty
George bashed the McCain campaign during the campaign, which is when it mattered. Some fought for originalism. George Will did not.

OK, but what does that have to do with not reading an article, and responding to it as if it says something that it does not?

32 posted on 11/11/2008 9:45:06 AM PST by Ron Jeremy (sonic)
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To: dirtboy

I agree that his trashing of Sarah Palin was offputting, to say the least, and, oddly enough, he has always seemed to be sort of a closet admirer of the British system as opposed to our own but, nonetheless, on his fundamental point here he seems to be on target. On a personal note, when I was involved in a significant law suit years ago trying to stop the creeping “partyism” whose fruits we are now seeing and its harm to the Constitution, he claimed great interest and requested information, but wrote zero when to do so would have been helpful.


33 posted on 11/11/2008 9:45:39 AM PST by AmericanVictory (Should we be more like them, or they like us?)
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To: cookcounty
"You have a lot of gall mentioning the intent of the Founders when you actively trashed the only person on either ticket who had ANY grasp of originalism."

I would say that it takes a lot of gall to suggest that the guy who authored McCain-Feingold (limits on political speech, perhaps the most unconstitutional things there is) has any grasp of originalism.

34 posted on 11/11/2008 9:46:53 AM PST by Ron Jeremy (sonic)
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To: AmericanVictory

He’s had how much time during this election to discuss “demagoguery and mob rule and the erasure of republicanism as the Founders conceived it in favor of pure democracy that inevitably moves toward dictatorship?”???????????

He doesn’t realize his contribution to what he’s complaining about- that’s a true elite!


35 posted on 11/11/2008 9:58:10 AM PST by mrsmith
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To: Ron Jeremy
I would say that it takes a lot of gall to suggest that the guy who authored McCain-Feingold (limits on political speech, perhaps the most unconstitutional things there is) has any grasp of originalism.

We are talking Palin, not McCain.

36 posted on 11/11/2008 10:19:17 AM PST by dirtboy
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To: dirtboy

Oh, I stand corrected.


37 posted on 11/11/2008 10:23:19 AM PST by Ron Jeremy (sonic)
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To: mrsmith

That’s true of much of the punditocracy here in Washington. Thank God for the Internet and forae such as this one.


38 posted on 11/11/2008 10:27:36 AM PST by AmericanVictory (Should we be more like them, or they like us?)
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To: AmericanVictory
I do believe in the past George would have published this during the campaign- Obama's money, and the 'democratic' type of campaign that allowed, was the top story of the election and in the past would have been unbearably antithetical to George's principles.

But being a conservative elite pundit is so psychologically self-destructive in DC: the day one becomes a courtier is just a tiny step in an endless series of constant humiliations and compromises of principles.

39 posted on 11/11/2008 11:00:05 AM PST by mrsmith
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To: ari-freedom
You know what, no. No. I will not have you besmirch two fine English actors by comparing them to Christo and George.

:-D )))

40 posted on 11/11/2008 11:06:40 AM PST by RichInOC (Obama/Biden '08: "We Are Not Ruled By Murderers, But Only--By Their Friends."--Rudyard Kipling)
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