In today’s politics, I think he’d qualify.
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The Constitution is the last refuge of scoundrels? States are in charge of their elections not the federal government. At least until the time the sheep would elect Democrats back to power and they abolish the Constitution.
Yeah, he should dictate to the States as if the federal government was all powerful. He should just abolish the Constitution and State’s rights and be a dictator.
Congress does not have oversight of the States unless they violate the Constitution. Read the Constitution about the federal government only has the rights not given to the states. The Supreme Court would laugh at this demand.
Ah, the right-wing’s current favorite bit of ignorant nonsense playing dress-up as “erudition”.
Merriam-Webster’s primary definition of a democracy:
1
a : government by the people especially : rule of the majority
b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
Now here is the same dictionaries definition of a republic:
1
a
(1) : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president
(2) : a political unit (such as a nation) having such a form of government
b
(1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law
(2) : a political unit (such as a nation) having such a form of government
Note that definition 1-b for democracy and 1-b-1 for republic are virtually the same.
A republic is a type of democracy, in fact the only type that has ever existed in modern nations.
All republics in the world today are democracies, and all democracies in the world today are republics.
Or if regular dictionaries are suspect to you, pick any political science definition if republic and see what it says. The one that comes to the top of the search results on Google when I type in “political science definitions” has this:
Republic [AGBV, 2005].
A form of government in which sovereignty rests with the people (or a portion of the people), as opposed to a king or monarch or dictator. This form of Representative Democracy was created by the framers of the US constitution.
Yes indeed, the Founding Fathers made us a representative democracy, which is exactly what “republic” means.
[In other news: RWNJs assert that dogs aren’t mammals, they are dogs!]
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States Rights. Sorry but it’s the Federal Government Right to intervene when there areas that puts unnecessary burden of Americans to vote
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You might try reading the Constitution.
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In today’s politics, he wouldn’t want to. (late edit: meant to say he wouldn’t want to be part of the GOP.)
True story: at the end of WW2, people in both the Reps and the Dems wanted to nominate Eisenhower, the architect of D-Day and the liberator of Nazi-occupied Europe, for President. Trouble was, nobody had the slightest idea which party he might subscribe to, because Ike was in a long tradition of non-political generals.
Unlike, just to pick an example at random, Douglas MacArthur, who might be a bit more at home in today’s Trumpublican Partei.
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“Since when did it become OK for congress critters (including and
especially the minority members of a committee) to end-run Committee
Heads like this?”
It can be necessary if a committee chairman is abusing his power and members of the minority party have no other way to head off some kind of legislative tyranny. The Democrats have not used it nearly enough. The Republicans have been using it extensively, it seems to me, in response to the existential threat of Democratic control of the House. For instance, they ganged up on Adam Schiff and demanded in a letter that he resign, when as chairman he was just getting started on the Russia investigation. Pulling out some actual facts as Schiff was, Republicans were naturally disturbed that they could no longer suppress testimony and disinvite important witnesses from testifying.
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The Mazars accountancy firm wrote back to Cummings saying they could not comply with his “request” for information on their client, Trump, unless he issued a subpoena. Which he has now graciously provided.
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Thank you, I saw the comments from our newest red-baiting commenter and didn’t want to respond in kind, but this “we are not a democracy, we are a republic” trope was something I felt I had to respond to, because I am seeing it referenced increasingly frequently, and I feel it reveals something significant in modern conservative thinking.
Because I think this attempt at “erudition” is more than pedantry or semantic wordsmanship.
First of all, of course Democrats know that we are a constitutional republic, and not a pure democracy in the purely majoritarian sense. We have a constitution that protects the rights of the individual from a tyranny of the majority.
So yes, we are not a democracy in the strictest sense. But as a form of representative self-government, we practice democracy.
And I think the distinction that modern conservatives parrot serves to denigrate our practice of self-government, that is, government by the consent of the people, and to justify what is becoming a tyranny of the minority.
Witness:
The last two Republican presidents lost the popular vote.
A Republican campaign of voter suppression has kept millions of eligible citizens from the voting booth and eliminated more than a thousand polling places in minority- and Democratic-leaning districts.
More than one Republican-led state has blocked efforts to restore the voting rights of felons.
Gerrymandering has enabled Republicans to ensure themselves legislative majorities despite being outnumbered by Democrats.
In the past two years, Republican-led state legislatures, most recently in the state of Wisconsin, have, in the wake of losing the governor’s mansion, acted to pass in lame-duck sessions legislation that sharply limits the powers of the incoming Democratic governor, including the power to make appointments to a state Elections Board.
And now, Republicans are opposing efforts by Congress to investigate instance of official wrongdoing in conducting elections in Republican-led states
Ans Republicans in the majority have governed as tyrannies; the 2017 Trump tax cut legislation and the attempt to repeal the ACA, when Republicans controlled both branches of Congress, were done without public hearings and an opportunity for Democrats to provide amendments.
And Trump and his fellow Republicans continue to pressure Democratic House Speaker Pelosi Democratic Senators for blocking an immigration bill and complain that they do not have 60 votes for passage in the Senate – even though the Republicans have not offered one – rather than simply put a bill forward and subject it to the give-and-take of the legislative process. It’s as if the Republicans are demanding the Democrats “spot” them 10 votes for a bill that they haven’t even crafted yet.
So when Republicans continue their drumbeat of “we are not a democracy, we are a republic” they are not engaged in a teaching moment to the unwashed Democratic masses on the fine points of our constitutional republican form of democratic self-government; they are legitimizing their tyranny of the minority and their continued governing in defiance of the consent of the people.
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So Republicans don’t want Democrats probing House elections, which take place at/below the state level? They’re really arguing that Congress doesn’t have the right to investigate their own elections?
These guys …
House Republicans Don’t Want Dems Probing State-Level Voting Rights Issues
House Republicans don’t want a lot of stuff, including fair elections.
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“The Chairman did not consult with the Republican member of the Committee before initiating his inquiry.”
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Why do these trashy ass beings think their letter writing is going to circumvent a Congressional CHAIRMAN’s demand letters?
You got to be desperately stupid to think so!
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After the letter of request, Mazars asked for a “friendly” subpoena in order to provide the documents, and the committee issued the subpoena, which Trump’s new lawyers told Mazars to ignore.
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That this is just an excuse for destroying democratic processes is telegraphed by the fact that they never follow up with a discussion of “why republics are not democracies” (because the claim would instantly disintegrate if they did) or draw any particular conclusion from the claim.
It is simply dropped into the discussion to shut down defense of democracy.
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It is the “X-Files” House rule.
Exactly.
I couldn’t believe they had the unmitigated gall to write that.
I don’t know about the voting rights inquiry, but the letter announcing the Mazars subpoena explicitly noted the subpoena was delayed until 11am Monday to give Republicans time to raise concerns.
So not only is acting without informing the minority exactly how the republicans ran the house under Paul Ryan, but the allegation that Cummings is doing it now is a flat out lie
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