Posted on 10/17/2018 6:41:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York's 14th Congressional District, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College. Her argument came on the heels of the Senate's confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. She was lamenting the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, nominated by Donald Trump, were court appointments made by presidents who lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College vote.
Hillary Clinton has long been a critic of the Electoral College. Just recently, she wrote in The Atlantic, "You won't be surprised to hear that I passionately believe it's time to abolish the Electoral College."
Subjecting presidential elections to the popular vote sounds eminently fair to Americans who have been miseducated by public schools and universities. Worse yet, the call to eliminate the Electoral College reflects an underlying contempt for our Constitution and its protections for personal liberty. Regarding miseducation, the founder of the Russian Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin, said, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." His immediate successor, Josef Stalin, added, "Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."
A large part of Americans' miseducation is the often heard claim that we are a democracy. The word "democracy" appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation -- the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. In fact, our Constitution -- in Article 4, Section 4 -- guarantees "to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." The Founding Fathers had utter contempt for democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, "there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual." At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph said that "in tracing these evils to their origin, every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy." John Adams wrote: "Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide." At the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton said: "We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty" is found not in "the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. ... If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy."
For those too dense to understand these arguments, ask yourselves: Does the Pledge of Allegiance say "to the democracy for which it stands" or "to the republic for which it stands"? Did Julia Ward Howe make a mistake in titling her Civil War song "Battle Hymn of the Republic"? Should she have titled it "Battle Hymn of the Democracy"?
The Founders saw our nation as being composed of sovereign states that voluntarily sought to join a union under the condition that each state admitted would be coequal with every other state. The Electoral College method of choosing the president and vice president guarantees that each state, whether large or small in area or population, has some voice in selecting the nation's leaders. Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states. They would be states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41 percent of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government "of the people"; instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states.
Political satirist H.L. Mencken said, "The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic."
Yes, our LEFTist public educrats at work. Abolish the Dept. of (mis)Education! How many go on and on about how the US Constitution was fatally flawed because it only counted slaves as 3/5s of a voter. We graduate functional illeterates from the Ivy League elite colleges who cannot understand the difference between rights, privileges and duties.
When the Democrats and LEFTists (but I repeat myself!) rant about winning the popular vote, I so dearly want to grab them to say that everybody knew the RULES BEFORE the ELECTION, your complaints are the equivalent of a baby’s tantrum!
Eliminating the Electoral College would completely disenfranchise and silence every rural voter in the US. This is still 49% of the population in this country who would lose all power of the vote.
This would be City ideology completely exterminating Country ideology through discrimination against ALL rural cultures and races. This would be one of the largest criminal acts that could ever be committed in this country period.
Fortunately for us, the founders put the electoral college in the constitution. That means that in order to ‘abolish’ it would take a constitutional amendment which would have to be proposed and voted on by 2/3 of the Congress or 2/3rds of the states calling a constitutional convention. Then it would have to be ratified by 3/4 of the states.
In other words, many of the same small states would have to vote against their interests. It’s not going to happen.
We should be going the other way and becoming more of a republic. Repeal the 17th amendment, let the state legislatures go back to selecting Senators. The Congress was originally set up to be made up of the people’s interests (the house) and the state’s interests (the senate). We could move away from factionalism imo.
And that was a major mistake.
You can’t “win” that which doesn’t exist.
There’s a reason our states are called “sovereign” and the smaller states (which out-number the large ones), aren’t about to give up their sovereignty.
This is a ‘fundamental transformation’ that’s not going to happen.
We are a Constitutional Republic.
Webster’s
“a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law”
The problem is the people we elect to represent us get to congress and forget where they came from and who they represent... They go rogue and back-stab those who’s ideology they are supposed to represent.
It is a useless debate. It’s not going anywhere.
_________________________________________________
Normally, I’d agree. But we should never underestimate the ability of the Left to undo normalcy or tradition.
The states have been transformed into mere administrative distress of fedzilla.
No, it is a Constitutional Republic. The rats want it to be a democracy, which would be accomplished by circumventing the Electoral College. If not outright abolished, the unconstitutional multi-state compact would do the same thing.
Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeking to represent New York’s 14th Congressional District, has called for the abolition of the Electoral College.
She is so stupid she needs pre-printed instructions to live...breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out. Pathetic.
Nobody has ever "lost" the popular vote because nobody ever campaigned to win the popular vote.
You can't win or lose a game that nobody is playing.
Very well done, sir. Thank you.
In 1962, the world series was won by NY Yankees 4 games to 3 over the Giants.
However, if you add up all the scoring, it was Giants 21, Yankees 20. Should we now declare the Giants the “real” winner?
Chicago runs Illinois, Detroit runs Michigan, NYC runs New York, Baltimore and a couple DC counties run Maryland, LA and SF run California.
Those are all the result of the popular vote. Electoral College was a stroke of absolute genius.
This transformation has already taken place. It’s called deficit spending. The guarantee of a Republican form of government is not there when you are born into debt from those whom you were not able to cast a vote for or against. In a Republican form of government, you elect someone to represent your interest at the big table where all of the decisions are made. No one can say they represent people who do not yet exist. Yet, here we are spending these non-existent people’s money and leaving THEM with the bill. Unconstitutional.
There is no debate.
Eliminate Electoral College = Elimination union of states.
We won’t stand for one county out-voting entire states.
Hillary can claim to have won the popular vote all she wants, but still 52% of the public voted against her.
There is no debate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
