boutons_deux
02-09-2012, 10:02 AM
Why the Right Wing Is Petrified of Letting Voters, Instead of the Electoral College, Pick Presidents
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell calls it “absurd and dangerous.” The Wall Street Journal says it deserves to “die.” The Heritage Foundation calls it “unconstitutional.” The Washington Post calls it “flawed.” A Republican National Committee resolution says it is a radical, un-American, “questionable legal maneuver.”
“We need to kill it in the cradle before it grows up,” McConnell told a Heritage Foundation audience last December.
Right-wingers like Uhlmann say that because human nature cannot be trusted, the founders created key governing bodies that were not elected, but instead consisted of wiser "elders" whose decisions put brakes on more impulsive majorities.
correct about NPV’s support. Majorities of American overwhelmingly back replacing the current Electoral College system with popular vote election of the president, according to Gallup, whose polls have tracked the issue for years. And it is not just Democrats who support this, although 71 percent of Democrats said they did, compared to 61 percent of Independents and 53 percent of Republicans polled last fall. But the Republicans who support NPV are cut from a different political cloth than the RNC leadership or conservative think tanks.
(NPV) “It is born from a frustration of a system that is inherently broken, a system that allots two-thirds to three-fourths of resources in a presidential campaign in the last six or seven weeks to six states. That isn’t democracy,”
“Any Republican and conservative who signs onto it needs a psychiatric examination. These people aren’t foolish. There are real constraints imposed by the Electoral College system.”
what of the right-wing critics who will continue to assert that America is not a democracy but a constitutional republic where the majority of voters should not get to vote for president—and for good reason, because of the tyranny of mob rule?
“Open a dictionary,” Koza replied. “Whether you are a democracy or not has nothing to do with whether you have a winner-take-all [Electoral College] rule. The president will still serve for four years. The federal legislature will still serve for two or six years, and they will make decisions on behalf of the public between elections. That’s the definition of a republic. These people who babble about democracy versus republic have never looked in the dictionary.”
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154027
If the conservatives and Repugs are violently against it, aka litmus test, then you know NPV is a wonderful idea.
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell calls it “absurd and dangerous.” The Wall Street Journal says it deserves to “die.” The Heritage Foundation calls it “unconstitutional.” The Washington Post calls it “flawed.” A Republican National Committee resolution says it is a radical, un-American, “questionable legal maneuver.”
“We need to kill it in the cradle before it grows up,” McConnell told a Heritage Foundation audience last December.
Right-wingers like Uhlmann say that because human nature cannot be trusted, the founders created key governing bodies that were not elected, but instead consisted of wiser "elders" whose decisions put brakes on more impulsive majorities.
correct about NPV’s support. Majorities of American overwhelmingly back replacing the current Electoral College system with popular vote election of the president, according to Gallup, whose polls have tracked the issue for years. And it is not just Democrats who support this, although 71 percent of Democrats said they did, compared to 61 percent of Independents and 53 percent of Republicans polled last fall. But the Republicans who support NPV are cut from a different political cloth than the RNC leadership or conservative think tanks.
(NPV) “It is born from a frustration of a system that is inherently broken, a system that allots two-thirds to three-fourths of resources in a presidential campaign in the last six or seven weeks to six states. That isn’t democracy,”
“Any Republican and conservative who signs onto it needs a psychiatric examination. These people aren’t foolish. There are real constraints imposed by the Electoral College system.”
what of the right-wing critics who will continue to assert that America is not a democracy but a constitutional republic where the majority of voters should not get to vote for president—and for good reason, because of the tyranny of mob rule?
“Open a dictionary,” Koza replied. “Whether you are a democracy or not has nothing to do with whether you have a winner-take-all [Electoral College] rule. The president will still serve for four years. The federal legislature will still serve for two or six years, and they will make decisions on behalf of the public between elections. That’s the definition of a republic. These people who babble about democracy versus republic have never looked in the dictionary.”
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154027
If the conservatives and Repugs are violently against it, aka litmus test, then you know NPV is a wonderful idea.