The country is slowly but surely turning away from the leftist policies of Barack Obama and the Reid/Pelosi Democratic Party. Yesterday, the voters of Missouri rejected the Obamacare mandate by a huge majority. Only 20% of the population, when surveyed, believes that we are being governed with our consent. Angelo Codevilla, has postulated the existence of a a governing class and a country class. This essay has spread around the internet like wildfire. Suddenly, the term “country class” is everywhere. I have previously discussed its meaning, as have many others.
One would expect the left, and the “governing class” (Is there a difference ?) to prepare a response. We are seeing the first skirmishes of the counter attack.
IT’S THE INSTITUTION, NOT THE PERSONALITIES…. In his column today, David Broder agrees that the Senate is failing as legislative body. Noting George Packer’s much discussed piece, “The Empty Chamber,” the Washington Post columnist notes with a degree of sadness what’s become of the chamber.
But Broder believes Packer overlooked an institutional problem:”Packer does as good a job as I have ever read of tracing the forces that have brought the Senate to its low estate. But he does not quite pinpoint the crucial factor: the absence of leaders who embody and can inculcate the institutional pride that once was the hallmark of membership in the Senate…. [I]t would be so much easier if there were leaders ready to lead.”
The Senate is failing us. Why ? Well, there are several diagnoses but they all come down to one basic problem.
“It’s unconscionable,” Carl Levin, the senior Democratic senator from Michigan, said. “The obstructionism has become mindless.”
The Senators were in the Capitol, sunk into armchairs before the marble fireplace in the press lounge, which is directly behind the Senate chamber. It was four-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon. McCaskill, in a matching maroon jacket and top, looked exasperated; Levin glowered over his spectacles.
“Also, it’s a dumb rule in itself,” McCaskill said. “It’s time we started looking at some of these rules.”
She was referring to Senate Rule XXVI, Paragraph 5, which requires unanimous consent for committees and subcommittees to hold hearings after two in the afternoon while the Senate is in session. Both Levin and McCaskill had scheduled hearings that day for two-thirty. Typically, it wouldn’t be difficult to get colleagues to waive the rule; a general and an admiral had flown halfway around the world to appear before Levin’s Armed Services Committee, and McCaskill’s Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight of the Homeland Security Committee was investigating the training of Afghan police. But this was March 24th, the day after President Barack Obama signed the health-care-reform bill, in a victory ceremony at the White House; it was also the day that the Senate was to vote on a reconciliation bill for health-care reform, approved by the House three nights earlier, which would retroactively remove the new law’s most embarrassing sweetheart deals and complete the yearlong process of passing universal health care. Republicans, who had fought the bill as a bloc, were in no mood to make things easy.
Of course ! The Republicans were being obstructionist in trying to stop a bill that, one year later, is rejected by 70% of Missouri voters.
In the words of Senator Judd Gregg,
“Obviously, they presume the Republican Party is an inconvenience. The democratic process is an inconvenience. It also appears, considering the opposition to this out in America, that the American people are an inconvenience.”
I really think this is at the heart of it. They know best and those who “obstruct” their plans must be silenced or removed.
Another front in the war between the “governing class” and the people is the Electoral College.
The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a new law intended to bypass the Electoral College system and ensure that the winner of the presidential election is determined by the national popular vote.
“What we are submitting is the idea that the president should be selected by the majority of people in the United States of America,” Senator James B. Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, said before the Senate voted to enact the bill.
Under the new bill, he said, “Every vote will be of the same weight across the country.”
But Senate minority leader Richard Tisei said the state was meddling with a system that was “tried and true” since the founding of the country.
“We’ve had a lot of bad ideas come through this chamber over the years, but this is going to be one of the worst ideas that has surfaced and actually garnered some support,” said Tisei, who is also the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor.
In fact, what the vote would do is disenfranchise the voters of smaller states and rural areas, who also just happen to vote Republican, so that the elections for president would be dominated by the deep blue urban areas whose voters are typically dependent on government largesse and who, except for the small governing class enclaves with in gates, pay few or no taxes.
In some ways, we could visualize a beneficial effect as the two halves of the country divide into a leftist urban coastal enclave and a central hard working “country party” America. Note which states have already approved the measure to bypass the Electoral College.
Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington have already approved the legislation, according to the National Popular Vote campaign’s website.
Illinois is the only non-coastal state but it is distinguished by its corrupt government and collapsing financial status.
We could not have expected they would not fight back. It’s interesting to see that the attacks seem to be on traditional institutions, especially those that restrain bad ideas.
