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Manage Your Expectations, GOP Voters
The cake is in the oven and is baking nicely. The cake will serve up a hearty GOP majority in the US House and possibly the US Senate when the election rolls around in almost seven months.
Lots can happen between now and then, of course. But Democrats have shown no proclivity, even interest, in doing anything to soften the coming blow, with weakness abroad, an open southern border, and raging inflation at home “baked in” to voters’ equation. Democrats seem content to lead with their chins. Maybe it’s a “long game” thing, where progressive Democrats think they can purge their non-woke brethren this fall and, while a minority in the 118th Congress, entice voters to pine for their socialist schemes as a harsh and angry GOP majority overplays their “authoritarian” hand.
Perhaps Democrats dream that AOC, who turns the constitutionally required 35 years of age on October 13, 2024, to qualify as President before the Fall election, will ascend from the hearts of Americans to the Capitol’s west front on January 20, 2025. Dr. Jill Biden will guide her doddering husband to their seats to facilitate the transfer of “the football” to the former Brooklyn bartender.
Imagine the day. Millions of Americans on the mall swoon in affection and admiration as she enthusiastically takes the stage in her white pantsuit on an unusually pleasant and cloudless winter day. The traditional 21-gun salute is replaced by the release of 195 doves – one for each country – as a loving gesture of peace to an unsettled world. A Boston University graduate with an Economics degree (cum laude!), gasps are heard as she thrusts her left hand skyward while placing her right hand on a copy of Das Kapital. As a gesture of solidarity with the Chinese people, a copy of the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung is stacked on top of Karl Marx’s book. Eschewing “so help me God,” which is not included in the constitutionally-prescribed the presidential oath, she points to the fawning crowd and laughs nervously and uncontrollably as they breathlessly await the first words of her historic inaugural speech. . .
If we are stuck with the deep state, I’d also like to see Congress having real authority to hold the administrative state responsible for wrong doing and corruption beyond impeaching the president.
Either extend impeachment to everyone in the administrative state, including the president’s cabinet, CIA, NSA, and Pentagon or give them their own law enforcement. I’d rather the former.
I think there may be a communication need to differentiate your idea from batch legislation. Because there’s a populist movement against batch bills that are 3000 pages long, your idea sound the exact opposite of that.
The president’s cabinet and appointed personnel of the various agencies are already subject to impeachment:
To extend it to include others would either require Congress to define what “civil Officers” are included or amending the COTUS.
FWIW, I believe the vast majority of our imperial state apparatus are not considered “civil officers,” but rather Civil Service employees.
We need to move impeachment away from the most politicized office on the planet and focus in on these other officers. But if there are “employees” directing national policy, they need to be impeachable.
Oh, I agree. I said in a comment on another thread that John Koskinen and Lois Lerner should have been impeached, and that it was a major failure of the GOP-controlled House that they weren’t. (assuming, of course that Lerner was subject to impeachment. Koskinen definitely was.)
Hadn’t heard about that, but it’s probably a worthless idea, and even a bad one. Who decides what a batch is?
The issue is that the movement wants to see what legislators are explicitly voting for so they can more adequately hold representatives accountable.
I am just pointing out why your batch idea is not gaining purchase among populists. They don’t want funding the wall rolled into a bill that makes sex education for preschoolers legal. I’m exaggerating, but that’s what the bundling looks like.
We want to see a senator vote yes for A and no for B.
And since you are suggesting batch voting, why don’t you define what it is? But 3000 pages is stupid. I can’t see how wanting to change that is stupid.
I don’t have a batch idea, did not suggest batch voting, and am not even sure what it is. I have a ratification idea. Most legislation these days is done by the administrative branch, so that’s where I’d like to concentrate my efforts, though other places are important, too.
You are the person who brought up batch voting, so I think it is incumbent on you to define what it is. I can make a guess, but my question remains unanswered: Who decides what a batch is? A lot rides on the answer to that question.
All I am saying is you need to differentiate between regulatory batch voting and bills/acts that lump multiple issues together.
I don’t think anyone has an issue with the legislature voting on regulations. They have an issue with batch voting. And I did not bring it up. You did.
I am just pointing out why your words may not be gaining ground on what should be a popular idea.
On one hand, we want legislators voting on regulations. On the other, we want single issue bills voted on in congress. So how can we get both without shooting down both ideas?
There is no practical or Constitutional way to do that. However we can remove barriers that keep us from getting even partway there.