Constitutional Concern Trolls

by digby

I’ve been enjoying all the deep concern and hand wringing that Republican gasbags and pundits are expressing over the Democratic primary. It’s always so nice of them to give advice and try to help us out. I’m sure they have our best interests at heart.

But I must confess that I’m actually a little stunned by this one:

In today’s Wall Street Journal, former Justice Department official John Yoo blasts the Democratic party for its “undemocratic” system of superdelegates:

“This delegate dissonance wasn’t anything the Framers of the U.S. Constitution dreamed up. They believed that letting Congress choose the president was a dreadful idea. Without direct election by the people, the Framers said that the executive would lose its independence and vigor and become a mere servant of the legislature. They had the record of revolutionary America to go on. All but one of America’s first state constitutions gave state assemblies the power to choose the governor. James Madison commented that this structure allowed legislatures to turn governors into ‘little more than ciphers.'”

Could somebody please tell me again how the electoral college is democratic, because back in 2000 something weird happened and I got all confused.

Without even commenting on the ludicrousness of Yoo a) worrying about the Democratic party’s nominating process and b) worrying about the constitution, it’s obvious that what Yoo conceives as the framers’ vision was an elected dictatorship. He just has no respect for any other office. He’s so obsessed with the fear that executives will be “turned into ciphers” that you have to wonder just what kind of psychological issues this guy has. (After all, there’s the indefinite imprisonment and torture thing too …)

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