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The only way we will avoid a constitutional crackup is for a new, bipartisan majority to take effective control of the House...This unfortunate moment is a vindication of...Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein,...in their appropriately named book, “It’s Even Worse than It Looks
Indeed.
The difficulty here is not just the obstructionist GOP majority in the House - it's the blindness of "constitution-worship", the unwillingness of many (but not all) politicians, pundits and informed citizens to acknowledge that this crisis, like the crisis of 1995, goes beyond partisanship to expose a fundamental flaw in the U.S. constitutional structure. The last two years haven't been ordinary party politics: they've been an outright constitutional crisis.
It's worked for over 200 years. This is just another speed bump and eventually we'll get over it, just like we have all the other ones is the past. Our constitution is a remarkable document that has served us well.
It's worked for over 200 years. This is just another speed bump and eventually we'll get over it, just like we have all the other ones is the past. Our constitution is a remarkable document that has served us well.
It hasn't worked all that well. At least once, in 1861, it failed catastrophically. And for another century after that, until the passage of the Civil Rights Act, it frustrated a resolution of the consequence of that first great crisis. Americans are often too imbued with reverence of the men who drafted it to objectively see its flaws: chief of which is absence of any mechanism to resolve deadlock between the three "active" components: presidency, senate and house.
In almost all other advanced countries, political deadlock triggers a new election to allow the people to resolve a question the politicians cannot. Thursday's "vote of no confidence" in the House, in any modern constitution, would likely have triggered such a mechanism. We instead have no way out; if the process of government fails, the only solution is to wait and hope.
Location: In a Galaxy far, far away called Germany
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The constitution is here to stay. Any movement to dissolve it or drastically change it will lead to a second civil war. As for flaws or needed changes - that document allows for further amendments and repeals. It is a pain in the butt to do it, but that is Democracy in action. Democracy is inherently inefficient, tedious, and combative. The only truly efficient government is a dictatorship (for whatever end they wish to be "efficient" in).
It's worked for over 200 years. This is just another speed bump and eventually we'll get over it, just like we have all the other ones is the past. Our constitution is a remarkable document that has served us well.
Yep. The only addition that doesn't belong is Barack Obama. HE does not undestand how government works. He is just a community organizer that does not know how to reach a consensus.
The constitution is here to stay. Any movement to dissolve it or drastically change it will lead to a second civil war. As for flaws or needed changes - that document allows for further amendments and repeals. It is a pain in the butt to do it, but that is Democracy in action.
Unfortunately, this flaw - an amendment process geared to thirteen constituent elements, which effectively does not function with fifty - may well prove more fatal than the tendency of the machinery to deadlock, since you're right: in the face of irresolvable political deadlock, the existing constitution provides no effective recourse. The only alternative is extra-constitutional action: civil war, revolution or coup d'etat.
Quote:
Democracy is inherently inefficient, tedious, and combative. The only truly efficient government is a dictatorship (for whatever end they wish to be "efficient" in).
Democracy may be inefficient, but so is the internal combustion engine. That doesn't mean most of us are willing to drive a Model T.
The difficulty here is not just the obstructionist GOP majority in the House - it's the blindness of "constitution-worship", the unwillingness of many (but not all) politicians, pundits and informed citizens to acknowledge that this crisis, like the crisis of 1995, goes beyond partisanship to expose a fundamental flaw in the U.S. constitutional structure. The last two years haven't been ordinary party politics: they've been an outright constitutional crisis.
Do they not take an oath to uphold and defend the constitution?
The GOP was not elected to a majority to rubber stamp obama's agenda.
A divided, slow moving government was intended. God help us when the two sides collude!
He is just a community organizer that does not know how to reach a consensus.
If the only thing a "community organizer understands" it is how to reach consensus which is the only way that loosely organized and fragile coalitions are maintained, something that anyone who hase every attended a community meeting would understand.
Unfortunately, this flaw - an amendment process geared to thirteen constituent elements, which effectively does not function with fifty - may well prove more fatal than the tendency of the machinery to deadlock, since you're right: in the face of irresolvable political deadlock, the existing constitution provides no effective recourse. The only alternative is extra-constitutional action: civil war, revolution or coup d'etat.
Democracy may be inefficient, but so is the internal combustion engine. That doesn't mean most of us are willing to drive a Model T.
Yep. The only addition that doesn't belong is Barack Obama. HE does not undestand (sic) how government works. He is just a community organizer that does not know how to reach a consensus.
Please explain how you arrived at the conclusion that Barack Obama "does not understand how government works." While in his early years he was a community organizer, he was also a state senator and U.S. Senator. Your words are like marginalizing Ronald Reagan by saying he was just a "B" actor, while ignoring that he was President of the Screen Actors Guild and Governor of California.
How you write is exactly what Dionne was writing about:
Quote:
This unfortunate moment is a vindication of those like my colleagues Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, who have been arguing that today’s Republicans are fundamentally different from their forebears. In their appropriately named book, “It’s Even Worse than It Looks,” Mann and Ornstein called the current GOP “an insurgent outlier in American politics,” and described the party this way: “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise . . . and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
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