While I agree with you in principle, and I too, have a conservative rep (a first termer in congress) I want to say the following.
Our founding fathers never intended to have people be career politicians. The just assumed, and with the quality and heart of the men involved, rightly assumed, that people would take turns going up on the hill to serve. They would run for election once or twice, and then bow out to continue in the private sector, thereby doing their duty to their country and moving on, and another person would step up and do theirs.
While I appreciate a great conservative on the hill, the overwhelming clamor for people, (at least the many I have seen/heard at rallys and protests) are clamoring for term limits. Due to the fact that politics has become a “career” for many, even the best people can lose sight of why they are there, as their power and influence grows.
The founders did not have lobbyists throwing money hand over foot at them, they went up to make the best decisions for the country, not them. While I respect a great many men and women on the hill, I am quite sure if we had term limits, many new and fresh thinking, uninfluenced people would be willing to step forward and serve. Right now, it is virtually impossible to unseat an incumbent, it practically takes a revolt like the one we are seeing to do so. This is why I said what I said. I can tell a good one from a bad one, and it is the rare day that I have cast a vote for one who should not be there. This is not the case for the majority of the country, as evidenced by our current administration.
You are correct, there will be casualties. But not if we can get term limits. It will actually bring good solid conservative candidates out of the wood work because they KNOW the incumbent can, and will be out after a second or perhaps third term ( I believe at least 3 terms for congress, 2 for senators).
It truly is hard to know exactly what to do. I feel it is better for my country to have term limits to limit the damage done by the likes of Reid, Pelosi, Kennedy, Frank, and on and on, however, I feel for the people who do have great representation in their district. That being said, you are the rare district, not the rule, and thusly, it is in the country’s best interest that we trust you to elect another great rep as you have proven you can do, while FORCING others to do the same through term limits. I do appreciate you presenting your views, they are well thought out and intellegent, and I only wish more people thought AND voted as you do! Thanks!
Actually it was much better written from the standpoint of logic than the one to which I replied.
I have always been convinced that our founding fathers never intended that we would have professional politicians; that one would serve and then return to private life.
However, I have always thought that we should appreciate and support those who have been good public servants who have respected the Constitution.
I started out to use this reply to argue that term limits have not kept us from electing bad choices to the presidency. However, I ended up with the following conclusion.
Term limits will not prevent us from electing either incompetent or evil persons to office, but term limits will limit the amount of damage they can do and will give us an opportunity to replace them with better.
We have elected several very bad presidents over the years since the retirement and death of the founding fathers. Term limits restricted the amount of damages.
Thank God and our founding fathers that they were limited to two terms.
But somehow we have got way off the track and off so far that term limits will not alone get is back on track.
We will continue down the road to Marxism and will eventually become a Marxist government unless we can return the government to one that is strictly held to those privileges outlined in the Constitution.
How that can be accomplished, I have no idea. I doubt that 5% of the voting public has any idea what the Constitution really means.