Posted on 06/01/2010 11:59:35 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Few members of the Tea Party have endorsed Rand Paul’s misgivings about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but a surprising number are calling for the repeal of an older piece of transformative legislation: the 17th Amendment. If you don’t have the Constitution on your smartphone, that’s the one adopted in 1913 that provides for direct popular election of United States senators.
Allowing Americans to choose their own senators seems so obvious that it is hard to remember that the nation’s founders didn’t really trust voters with the job. The people were given the right to elect House members. But senators were supposed to be a check on popular rowdiness and factionalism. They were appointed by state legislatures, filled with men of property and stature.
A modern appreciation of democracy — not to mention a clear-eyed appraisal of today’s dysfunctional state legislatures — should make the idea unthinkable. But many Tea Party members and their political candidates are thinking it anyway, convinced that returning to the pre-17th Amendment system would reduce the power of the federal government and enhance state rights.
Senate candidates have to raise so much money to run that they become beholden to special interests, party members say. They argue that state legislators would not be as compromised and would choose senators who truly put their state’s needs first.
Around the country, Tea Party affiliates and some candidates have been pressing for repeal — though there also has been a lot of hasty backtracking by politicians once the voters realized the implications. In Idaho, two candidates in last month’s Republican primary for the First District House seat said they favored repeal, including the winner, Raul Labrador...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Then why did the states or the voters thereof approve it?
That would change only slightly if state legislatures picked senators.
Before the 17th Amendment, the two senators from California were known as the "senators from the Southern Pacific." From Montana, they were "the senators from Anaconda Copper." From Pennsylvania, they were "the senators from King Coal." From the South, they were "the senators from King Cotton."
In politics, officials always find a way to grab a piece of all the money that is floating around. Politicians remind me of ants. Try to keep ants away from the cookies you just baked, and they always find a crack in the wall from which to send their foraging parties.
Put the state legislatures back into the mix, and the K Street boys will simply start fifty K Streets to do the same thing. Not a damn thing will change.
Let's run down the list: Boxer, Obama, Schumer. How much worse could the State Legislatures possibly do?
Of course, because Andrew Jackson was a populist Democrat.
It was during his presidency that Aleix de Tocqueville observed that America was heading for a situation in which the politicians promise to redistribute wealth from to the “unlucky” in exchange for their votes.
“it is hard to remember that the nation’s founders didn’t really trust voters with the job.”
Wow, they have REALLY earned the monicker “the Slimes” with THAT one!
Maybe "today's dysfunctional state legislatures" are a result of them losing their power to appoint Senators?
The idea of state government is that it is the closest to the people, and whose decisions have the most immediate impact on the people. Breaking the states' hold on the federal government made states practically irrelevant, and so their legislatures followed suit.
-PJ
If it’s all about the so-called popular will, then why should two senators elected from a state with the population of Wyoming have exactly equal power to another two senators elected from a state with the population of California?
Because it’s not about “democracy”. It’s about the fact that this is the United STATES of America, not the United PEOPLE of America.
The Times, and most of the left,
do not recognize the states as sovereign political entities.
The concept just doesn’t register with them.
They just don’t get it (The New York Times). Libertarians understand that honoring the Constitution means we honor its amendments too. At the same time we are free to speak critically about any of it –like Obama does.
Now, if the Dems want to give amnesty to Illegals, they should make an amendment or legislate a change recognized by the constitution.
It took an executive order from Obama to decriminalize marijuana. Why doesn’t he man up and do the same for immigration!
Democrats control both houses in 28 state legislatures. That’s 56 Democratic senators right off the bat. They control the lower house in a further 6 states and the upper house in a 7th. That could mean 63 Democrat senators, maybe more. Who wants that?
States would often leave seats vacant for years. Then there's the corruption and bought positions, as we saw recently with attempts to sell a vacancy-filling appointment. Some states had already started direct-electing senators through referendum.
And then you can't forget the effect of William Randolph Hearst. After all, his ability to vastly spread lies helped get us into the Spanish-American war and make marijuana illegal.
States like Illinois and New York would benefit most. Currently their Senators are voted in by a single large city. The 17th eliminated any rural voice in the Senate for those States that are dominated by a single large city.
States would often leave seats vacant for years. Then there's the corruption and bought positions, as we saw recently with attempts to sell a vacancy-filling appointment. Some states had already started direct-electing senators through referendum.
And then you can't forget the effect of William Randolph Hearst. After all, his ability to vastly spread lies helped get us into the Spanish-American war and make marijuana illegal.
.
Sure, if we repealed it right now (which will never happen). But we have no idea how things would have played out had this Amendment never been adopted.
Therefore, it is useless to project. The founders wanted the Senate elected by the states for good reason. It should have been left that way.
1913, the year of American infamy.
1. The 16th Amendment
2. The 17th Amendment
3. The Federal Reserve Act
4. And an ‘intellectual’ President who thought he knew more than anyone else.
I have often thought what is was that was so pressing that Americans thought they needed so many Constitutional Amendments and a handover of its federal government monetary responsibilities to bankers. And the answer is nothing, nothing but arrogance, an urge to ‘make a mark’ amounting to nothing more than foolish tinkering.
Having seen my legislature in action, I have just two words to say: Hell and No.
The Civil War killed federalism, and the debate after the war was who was going to control that all-powerful federal government.
In the 1870's, the Progressives made their first appearance. They started out as a branch movement from the Republican Party with religious roots. In the Northeast, they were primarily Episcopalians, and in the Midwest, they were primarily Lutherans. The Jeffersonian impulse, squashed at Appamattox, now came forward with the idea of using the federal government to work on behalf of the people, not on behalf of the corporate interests who now controlled many, if not most, of the states. They came up with a number of ideas.
There were others, but these were the big items.
The Progressive spent a generation wandering in the wilderness like most new political movements, and they finally achieved power in 1901 with Theodore Roosevelt.
In the first years of the Twentieth Century, Republican Progressives had enough clout to get direct election of senators through the House by the necessary two-thirds margin, but the Senate Judiciary Committee killed it every session.
The states then began invoking Article V, petitioning Congress for a Convention for Proposing Amendments to address direct election. (There were enough legislatures in the hands of Republican Progressives to get this movement some traction.) When two-thirds of the states petitioned for a Convention, the Senate acted.
Under the accepted rules for an Article V Convention, Congress should have called that Convention, but some of the petitions from the state legislatures stated that if Congress passed an amendment to effect direct election of senators, their petitions would be considered discharged. What the Senate feared was that the states would word the 17th Amendment to toss out all sitting senators and require the entire Senate to be re-populated in one election. So the Senate worded its version by permitting direct election to start with the 1914 congressional elections, and no sitting senator would be tossed out because of the amendment. It finally got out of the Senate by a two-thirds vote and was ratified by the states in record time.
It was an extremely popular amendment, as were most ideas the Progressives suggested in that era.
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.