Posted on 04/16/2009 9:39:13 PM PDT by Lorianne
How Big Finance is trying to keep the Senate banking chairman's imperiled political career afloat. __ As Senator Chris Dodd fights for his political career, the embattled chairman of the powerful Senate banking committee is receiving his own economic rescue package from the finance industry. According to the five-term senator's latest campaign disclosures, filed earlier this week, the financial sector is flooding Dodd's campaign war chest with donations in advance of what is expected to be a tough reelection bout.
(Excerpt) Read more at motherjones.com ...
Dodd did raise over a $1 million for the 1st Qtr. Rob Simmons did little fundraising. I think Simmons is trying to lull Dodd into staying on. By seeing Simmons raise little and Lieberman endorsing him, Dodd might get cocky.
Which is why Senators should be appointed by their state legislators. Whom does Connecticut think Dodd is going to be beholden to, them or outsiders?
-PJ
If CT appointed Senators, Dodd would never be dislodged. The GOP hasn’t won majority control of both chambers in years.
he has collected less than $5,000 in his home state and more than $600,000 from out of state in the past 3 months
______________
Hmmmmmm, 600K from out of state? Hmmmmmmmm
Most of CT is registered Independent. Perhaps they'd vote in more like-minded state legislators who would appoint more like-minded Senators?
Besides, you'd rather have unaccountable money going to a Senator's campaign accounts than a State Legislature appointing someone? At least you'd know where his loyalties lie.
-PJ
There’s no guarantee that the person that may be sitting there (absent Dodd) would be any better, but you would be guaranteed (especially in states that haven’t had GOP majorities in decades where the legislature is concerned) that the Senators would be even less accountable to the people than they are. You’d just merely have key state legislators getting their palms greased to reelect these crooks ad infinitum.
The state legislators are scarcely much better than the federal ones are (and in many heavily Dem states, they don’t even draw GOP competitors, nevermind “Independents”, which is a joke). Sure, they might run out Dodd when the heat is on, but his replacement would end up being just as leftist, but because they’d be less known, they’d be more difficult to vilify. That’s why I always warn that seeing some Dems run out of office only to be replaced by quieter ones does us no favors. We’re better off having high-profile Dem crooks and cretins remain so as to illustrate precisely what they stand for (case in point, replacing the insane anti-Semite Cynthia McKinney in GA. She wasn’t defeated by a Republican, but by Hank Johnson, just another leftist Democrat who happens to be a quiet Buddhist. Now how the hell can you vilify a pleasant-seeming Buddhist despite his voting record being almost indistinguishable from McKinney’s ?).
I pinged Billyboy, because he has a very distinct take on the notion of getting rid of the 17th Amendment.
It will only be filled by a RINO so there wont be any great victory
Oh, yeah. Because Dodd is a RAT.
To that point, you would also make the biggest strives towards actual campaign finance reforms, because you will have eliminated the most expensive frequent elections. I doubt that the national parties, as fundraising organizations, would survive on House elections alone, and the presidential election that happens every four years.
You won't seee people like Chuck Schumer as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairperson, because there won't be such a thing.
To me, having someone like Gov. Perry talk about taking back the 10th Amendment is pointless without also taking back control of the selection of a State's Senators, too, if states really want to regain their influence in the federal government.
-PJ
I have to disagree that all these things would change for the better. Worse than that, some states would automatically make it impossible a Republican would even be able to win because of the makeup of their legislatures. Alabama, for example, would be sending two Democrats to DC, as would Kentucky. Some states where we were able to get in reformers, however briefly (such as Fitzgerald in IL) would never have been able to be elected in the first place.
I believe that you would have hacks and cronies as well as bosses occupying these seats for perpetuity. You had that happen in so many states prior to the 17th Amendment. Until recently, I’d never have trusted my state legislature to elect Senators. No Republican would have been able to have gotten elected until this year (prior to that, not since the late 1860s). We’d have had execrable cretins like Jim Sasser (who had previously been the Dem state party chair) occupying the seat for perpetuity, just as he did for 18 years getting elected popularly. Fred Thompson couldn’t have won, either. As I said, I think you’d have even less accountability if the 17th were abolished.
If the people are voting 53-47 Democrat these days (51-49 for the past two presidential electtions), do you really think that overwhelming Democrat over-population of state governments would be sustainable? If we never had the 17th, do you envision that the 20th century would have been entirely Democrat-controlled?
If we repealed the 17th, it would take time for a new balance to emerge, I agree with that. But that would just mean that people would have to pay more attention to their local elections, and state elections, in order to influence the appointment of Senators to Congress.
The other thing that increased scrutiny at the local level will help is the recent strategy by Democrats to win the state Secretary of State positions. Doesn't seem odd that in all the close elections, it's a Democrat in charge of the election process? That's because there has been a state-focused strategy to put Democrats in charge of the SoS positions. I can't see how an evenly split electorate can consistently put only Democrats in key offices unless Republicans are asleep at the wheel.
-PJ
No, it wouldn't be all Democrat. I produced a list fairly recently showing what the current Senate would look like if the 17th hadn't been enacted:
Senate breakdown without 17th Amendment
We'd have only a couple more Republicans than we currently have (44 instead of 41). 26 states would have Senate delegations unchanged from what they already are. I concluded that there might be fewer Conservative Republicans, too, and far more "Establishment" types in both parties (read that as liberals/RINOs).
How I ascertained the exact makeup was by looking at the majority party (combining both bodies) at the time of each Senator's election (after either 2004, 2006 or 2008).
"If the people are voting 53-47 Democrat these days (51-49 for the past two presidential electtions), do you really think that overwhelming Democrat over-population of state governments would be sustainable?"
There are a number of states where the percentages of legislators are out of whack with the percentage voting. Massachusetts is a prime example. The state has a 90% Democrat legislature, but 90% of the voters AREN'T voting Democrat, either as an overall percentage for the body, or for President. Indeed, it ought to be 36% going by the last election, but it isn't. MA last elected a GOP Senator popularly in 1972, but the last year in joint session it could've elected a GOP Senator was 1953. Which meant, ironically, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. would've defeated JFK (although with the Dems outnumbering the GOP in 1955 solely because of their numerical majority in the House, but not the State Senate, JFK could've then beaten incumbent Republican Leverett Saltonstall).
Another example of where the GOP should have a majority in the legislature but doesn't includes AL, KY, WV & AR, where they're already pretty much established GOP states where Presidential elections are concerned, but the Dems have had a longtime establishment presence that has prevented us from fully taking control (of those 4, we only have KY's State Senate, but they are outnumbered by the Dems in the KY House). But still, all 4 of those states would send 8 Dem Senators to DC, but instead, we have half of those, which would be an impossibility without the 17th.
"If we never had the 17th, do you envision that the 20th century would have been entirely Democrat-controlled?"
For the most part, at least after 1930, yes. Our serious erosion in the Northeast, Rust Belt and the West Coast, all of which used to be solid GOP bastions. But there has been that problem, again, that the Dems have generally been overrepresented in office. If we had a "parliamentary" system, for example, where the party that voted for President got the same representation in Congress/Senate, well, in 1972, the Dems wouldn't have even won 100 seats in the House (out of 435), but instead, we only got to 192 or so, meaning well over 130 more Dems were sitting in GOP voting districts. But that began with the Depression, which often permanently destroyed GOP fortunes in many urban areas where we had been either competitive or the majority. If you lived in Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, Detroit or Philadelphia in the 1920s and saw the cities today, they'd be absolutely floored that they've become virtually all-Dem. These were Republican cities. Making up for those urban losses has been extremely difficult, and often we can't.
"If we repealed the 17th, it would take time for a new balance to emerge, I agree with that. But that would just mean that people would have to pay more attention to their local elections, and state elections, in order to influence the appointment of Senators to Congress."
As I said, I think the difference would be negligable. The reason the 17th was put into place was because people wanted individual accountability from their Senators. Political bosses opposed it because it meant they couldn't install hacks (or themselves). Of course, we ended up with hacks and bosses anyway. It's like in my state, where we're the home of Baker v. Carr, which wanted to demand one-man, one-vote from legislative districts and remove the influence of rural bosses. Guess what happened ? After a brief period of turmoil and the GOP briefly electing a Speaker in 1969 (the earliest Southern state in the modern era for that to occur), the Dems reasserted control and the rural bosses were right back again, as they were right up until just the past 2 years (and we have a puppet RINO House Speaker who was "selected" by one of those rural Dem bosses). He'd have been the kind of puppet the state Dems would've sent to DC if the GOP got near majority status.
"The other thing that increased scrutiny at the local level will help is the recent strategy by Democrats to win the state Secretary of State positions. Doesn't seem odd that in all the close elections, it's a Democrat in charge of the election process? That's because there has been a state-focused strategy to put Democrats in charge of the SoS positions. I can't see how an evenly split electorate can consistently put only Democrats in key offices unless Republicans are asleep at the wheel."
Sometimes the GOP is asleep at the wheel, or falls with national fortunes. Remember that the Dems seized a lot of those Sec of State offices in the turnover of 2006. Not all Secs of State are popularly elected. In my state, the legislature elects them, and we elected the first GOP Sec of State in January since Reconstruction (he's the former House GOP Minority Leader). It's just that the Dems won in some key states (such as Ohio, where Ken Blackwell vacated it, or in MN, where the GOP lost its downballot incumbents outside of Gov/Lt Gov). But that may have had little outcome on the Presidential races in those states, but it did enable chicanery for some Congressional races (such as the MN Senate race and Jennifer Brunner's theft of OH-15, "counting" until the Dem candidate won).
I would say that my choice is to take power away from Washington and bring it closer to home, to the States, which should have been the dominant governments for the people.
-PJ
When I referred to "evil," I was using that in terms of the "lesser of two evils." I was not implying that Democrats are "evil."
I'm saying that the issue of the 17th is one of living with the "evils" we choose, vs. choosing our representatives and living with the "evils" that they choose.
The biggest implication of the 17th is regarding states' rights. Should we choose state representatives and live with the choices that they make, just as we do when choosing representatives in the House of the Congress? One of those choices they make is who will represent the state in the Senate of the Congress. That choice was taken away from our state representatives. Are there any choices we should take away from our represenatatives in the House?
To me, the 17th gets to the heart of what it means to be a republican form of government. We choose people to represent us, and then we take away the choices we ask them to make for us. When the Big Weighty Choices are taken back, and all that's left are the Small Mundane Choices, then why be a representative (unless you're in it for the money to be paid for influence)?
-PJ
“You won’t seee people like Chuck Schumer as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairperson, because there won’t be such a thing.”
The money would go to state legislative campaigns.
Common sense tells me an appointed Senate would be more corrupt and less accountable.
“Most of CT is registered Independent. Perhaps they’d vote in more like-minded state legislators who would appoint more like-minded Senators?”
Nothing is stopping them from doing so now. They send liberal toads instead.
Exactly.
And that state campaign money will be spent locally in the states, not nationally to NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and the NYT.
State campaigns will employ state people, the money will be gotten from people with state interests, and the attention will draw in real grass-roots people.
National blocs couldn't afford to fund all the state legislative offices, and wouldn't be willing to take the risks that individual state elections will line up into a cohesive national interest group.
-PJ
Imus is a Connecticut resident and is supporting Dodd for re-election. If anyone out there listens, tune him out.
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