Republican Knives come out for Palin...lots of dirt

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Which is fine by me. The country was formed by a collection of states and I like having states being able to do their own thing.

Like gobbling up federal dollars for farm subsidies?

[KrazyHorse]

I honestly don't understand what federalism as a limitation on the federal government's ability to impose laws on Wyoming has to do with the fact that Wyoming is overrepresented in the Senate.

I thought that's what the Constitution was for.

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Which is fine by me. The country was formed by a collection of states and I like having states being able to do their own thing.

I'm rather tired of having the cities underrepresented.

[EPW]

Redraw state borders every ten years

[Asher]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Screw that... there is a reason the Senate is called the mature House. Having to represent an entire state means you have a diverse electorate you have to placate and makes you less crazy.

Senate

Have you heard of one Ted Stevens?

[GePap]

Originally posted by MrFun
If McCain staffers are so infuriated with his loss, why don't they give McCain a knock on the head for choosing such an awful running mate? She was a BAD choice.

You haven't spent any time in politics, right?

A McCain staffer owes their position to..drumroll, please, John McCain, who also happens to remain a US Senator, which is a sight better and more prestigious job than Alaska governor.

Now, any one staff member might have thought that picking Palin was a poor choice, as it turned out to be, but in the end, McCain is still their man, not Palin.

You don't betray your meal ticket unless you have someone even better already lined up.

[GePap]

The Republicans survived getting crushed in the 1930's and 1960's. Why the hell would this one victory bring about a schism?

There is simply too much structural support for a two party system, given that two parties have spent the last 150 years making it so. There would have to be revolutionary change in American politics to depart from the two party system.

[KrazyHorse]

Chris Matthews is ripping the hell out of Palin. He looks like he's going to cry at the ignorance.

[GePap]

From a partisan point of view, I wouldn't the Republicans following the voice of fundamentalism back to the far right.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
I honestly don't understand what federalism as a limitation on the federal government's ability to impose laws on Wyoming has to do with the fact that Wyoming is overrepresented in the Senate.

I thought that's what the Constitution was for.

Federalism has been dead for decades, didn't you get the memo?

Perhaps originally that's "what the Constitution was for," but only until the Supreme Court started questionably "construing" it toward greater and greater power for the federal government. At this point there is almost nothing the state of Wyoming can do that the federal government couldn't also do in its stead, or that it couldn't totally supersede.

For instance, the Interstate Commerce Clause has been construed so broadly that even a contract between two people in Wyoming, to build a latrine in the middle of Wyoming, is subject to federal regulation merely because the wood used to build it happened to have been originally cut in Montana.

The issue isn't that "federalism" keeps Congress from screwing with the boonies, it's that there isn't enough political will in the relatively rural-skewed Senate to do so. With strictly proportional representation you'd see just how meaningless a word federalism is in this day and age.

In other words, I guess you could say the Senate and Electoral College are the "last bastions" of federalism because the once-sacrosanct theory of enumerated vs. reserved powers has eroded so much over the years.


* - Note that I'm not saying that this erosion is necessarily a bad thing, as the New Deal, the Civil Rights Acts, and myriad other progressive steps would likely have been found unconstitutional without it. I'm just responding to your point about whether federalism has anything to do with overrepresentation in the Senate.

[KrazyHorse]

The issue isn't that "federalism" keeps Congress from screwing with the boonies, it's that there isn't enough political will in the relatively rural-skewed Senate to do so

And what keeps Congress from screwing with, for instance, the inner cities? Nothing. The only thing that the skewed representation does is grant political power to one relatively small group of people at the expense of the people in the larger whole.

Why is it that "rural voters" as a constituency deserve so much more political cover than any other constituency?

What we see is that the all the current system does is to let small states suck up to the teat of the federal government more effectively.

Boo.

[Darius871]

That may be, but I DanS'ed you:

Originally posted by Darius871

* - Note that I'm not saying that this erosion is necessarily a bad thing, as the New Deal, the Civil Rights Acts, and myriad other progressive steps would likely have been found unconstitutional without it. I'm just responding to your point about whether federalism has anything to do with overrepresentation in the Senate.

In other words, I'm not arguing that federalism in itself has any particular value, but rather that the Senate/EC structure is not only part and parcel to federalism, but in fact the last besieged vestige of it. They're too intertwined to be separated, though if think both should be destroyed, I'd have no problem with that.

[KrazyHorse]

I agree that it is part of federalism, but if you want to protect from federal overreach my point is that paring back the overbroad interpretations of certain federal mandates (like, say, the commerce clause) is a better way to go about things than is granting South Dakota 2 Senators.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Asher

Flubber too.

And Zylka.

We're not crazy, we're just smarter than Americans. You perceive that as crazy.

Common mistake.

Flubber and Zylka makes me 3 for 4.

[KrazyHorse]

Flubber's not originally from Alberta though (assuming you don't think Zylka's the sane one); he moved there as an adult.