How the 17th Amendment Stole Your State's Voice
Repeal and Recall: The 17th Amendment Created Senators Who Answer to Everyone but Their States
Repeal and Recall: The 17th Amendment Created Senators Who Answer to Everyone but Their States
(Alexander Muse) - Begin with a simple question. Who is John Thune’s constituency? The civics textbook answer is the people of South Dakota. The textbook is wrong, and the SAVE America Act proved it. President Trump declared the bill his number 1 legislative priority. The House passed it. The Republican base demanded it. Polling showed broad public support for requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. The South Dakota legislature is among the reddest in America, and its voters delivered Trump one of his largest margins in the nation. Yet when the moment came, the Senate Majority Leader refused to change the rules to pass it, refused even a talking filibuster, and let the bill die on the floor this June. He explained himself with arithmetic: the votes aren’t there. But whose votes? Not South Dakota’s. Not the American people’s. The votes of his fellow senators, the small club whose secret ballot made him leader and whose secret ballot can unmake him. In a 53 member Republican conference, it takes 27 senators to hold the leader’s gavel. Those 27 senators are John Thune’s true constituency. The people of South Dakota, the legislature of South Dakota, and the voters of the United States all stand in line behind them.
This is not a complaint about one man’s character. Thune is behaving rationally given the incentives he faces, and that is precisely the point. When an officeholder consistently…
They stopped serving We the People a while ago and if they went to war over .3 cent tax WTF are we waiting for enslaved then it’s gonna be a little late