Phil1111 1,183 #1 June 24, 2018 Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding policy along the southern border, which was merely the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans — these are probably expanding and contracting cohorts, respectively — fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote.... Ryan and many other Republicans have become the president's poodles, not because James Madison's system has failed but because today's abject careerists have failed to be worthy of it. As Madison explained it in Federalist 51: "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place." Congressional Republicans (congressional Democrats are equally supine toward Democratic presidents) have no higher ambition than to placate this president. By leaving dormant the powers inherent in their institution, they vitiate the Constitution's vital principle, the separation of powers.... Recently Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who is retiring, became an exception that illuminates the depressing rule. He proposed a measure by which Congress could retrieve a small portion of the policymaking power that it has, over many decades and under both parties, improvidently delegated to presidents. Congress has done this out of sloth and timidity — to duck hard work and risky choices. Corker's measure would have required Congress to vote to approve any trade restrictions imposed in the name of "national security." All Senate Republicans worthy of the conservative label that all Senate Republicans flaunt would privately admit that this is conducive to sound governance and true to the Constitution's structure. But the Senate would not vote on it — would not allow it to become just the second amendment voted on this year. This is because the amendment would have peeved the easily peeved president. The Republican-controlled Congress, which waited for Trump to undo by unilateral decree the border folly they could have prevented by actually legislating, is an advertisement for the unimportance of Republican control. https://www.adn.com/opinions/national-opinions/2018/06/24/this-november-cast-your-vote-against-the-gop/ Will served as an editor for National Review from 1972 to 1978 The Frustration of the Anti-Trump Republicans https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/anti-trump-republicans-frustration-bob-corker-mark-sanford/ Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
