I don’t think you ever want to have a Constitutional Convention. God knows what’s lurking in the sidelines.
No, not now or then a solution. Term limits shift power from the elected idiots that we know to behind-the-scenes administrators and office staff that we don’t and would not know. No one has ever explained how term limits would not cause that shift the the Washington workers and, more importantly, how to prevent it.
When the Founding Fathers first drafted the Constitution setting out the ground rules as to who could be a senator or congressional representative, they couldn’t easily have foreseen the advanced life spans to which we have aspired.
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They did foresee the dangers of having a President with divided loyalties, so they required a natural born citizen and excluded the children of foreigners and we can’t even get anyone to uphold that.
I don’t need no stinkin government.
And, quite cleverly, the backers of the coup are not visible. The old man they have put in office is a feint, a smokescreen.
Clever because you can't fight an enemy that you can't even see.
Asymmetric PUSHBACK in progress...
yes, this too
MAGA
Not going to happen. Neither party will support it.
They don’t give a damn about good government. All they care about is their own political longevity and the “remuneration” that goes along with it.
Try this article on for size. It gets more to the point.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/be_lions_not_sheep.html
if not sooner!!!
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earlier or sooner?
I doubt that The Founding Fathers ever envisioned a situation where we would have worthless career politicians who can regulate their own pay, and are able to enrich themselves through nefarious means to the point that they have four mansions (a-la joe biden). Being a career DC politician is much, much more lucrative than anything else the lazy, weak-minded could imagine. The original Patriots served for expenses only and did so as legitimate service.
For the timid souls who are soiling their drawers over what could go wrong the enemy just stole a Presidential election. How else are you going to bring this power hungry Junta to an end? They will be able to enact their own amendments soon enough with the Congress. Just like the enemy has a supermajority in California NOW.
Utter nonsense. Even if Trump had been in favor of term limits there were not 67 votes in the Senate or 292 votes in the House to pass the required amendment.
Back in the 1980s, I worked as a legislative counsel to a republican state assemblyman, in the democrat-controlled Assembly. Every two years, at the start of the new legislative session, he co-sponsored the term limit legislation, which never saw the light of day, but provided him with campaign material for the four terms that he served in the Assembly. He was then elected to the republican-controlled Senate, where he never again sponsored the term limit legislation, and where he did nothing for the next 22 years, except pick up a big paycheck and accept awards and congratulations for spending taxpayers' money, as if the money came out of his own pocket.
This is where the Founding Fathers screwed up , they never realized there would be Professional Politicians(the worst of the worst for the US)
To get better representatives in DC comb through the laws that give advantage to incumbents. Those are the 'laws' the worst of our Representatives make sure they always read, support, and milk.
Wasn’t term limits shot down by the supreme court?
If term limits had been started 200 years ago they would have been terminated 100 years ago. The American political system was created to serve the people. It’s main use now is to enrich certain people (politicians and their “connections”) at the expense of most other people.
We have a way to get rid of bad Representatives. It’s called the POWER OF RECALL. If you know your Constitutional Convention, you’d know that in Madison’s Notes of Debate the delegates commented on the power of recall, which is why the House of Representatives is a two-year stint. But then, you can only get rid of your own rep.....
Term limits aren’t about your own bad representative, it’s about getting rid of other people’s Representatives that were lawfully elected and lawfully maintained. You could say that it’s anti-republican (representative government) and anti self-government. Not to mention the anti self government consequences of term limits.
It worries me that the “stellar” people at the Federalist are putting this crap out. Don’t they think before they publish?
“Term limits” is no panacea for anything.
In my view it will always mean, in practical terms, throwing out the baby with the bathwater (removing many good representatives merely to follow a zero tolerance rule trying to get rid of the bad guys).
Actually I think the overall (average) quality of representatives will decline.
I think that instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater a better set of reforms would be reforms of senate and house rules.
The first rules to get rid of is any respect for “seniority” when it comes to committee and leadership positions. Having been there longer should give no representative dibs on any position.
All positions in the House or Senate and their committees should be subject to secret ballot election by all members of a caucus, committee, or the house or senate as a whole. Being on certain committees should never be automatic and there is where “term limits” should be applied, so that fresh faces on a committee get to bring fresh ideas to the proposed legislation that goes before them. It is through the committees and the long incumbency on committees that the same stale ideas keep getting promoted. The same term limits on representation on committees should apply to the staff on the committees as well. More often than not it is not the not-so-smart representatives that actually fashion a piece of legislation as it is the staff of the committees working under them, and in major legislation often with the representatives not even reviewing the finished product except in a cursory manner. It is also through the long standing seat holding on committees that representatives build power over what goes before the committees and the pay-to-play campaign donation corruption that follows with the industries or interests affected by the legislation that goes through a committee. Get rid of the permanent seat-holding allowed on the committees, and much of that problem goes away.
It is those things, more than term limits on holding a seat in Congress, that would make for great changes without throwing the baby out with the bath water - in my view.
I think “term limits” would easily remove from office many good people we would be better off keeping in office. “Term limits” is like labeling as guilty every representative, no matter how well they have served. I don’t think removing good people, even for a supposedly good reason, is ever a good thing.