The Party Of Ideas

by digby

I see Ron Paul on TV virtually every day now, sometimes making interesting points about things like the Fed. Far more often he’s speaking idiotic nonsense. But the conservative Mandarins are starting to pay close attention, since he’s a hero among the teabag faction. Here’s Tony Blankly taking up a Ron Paul brainstorm:

As an early 1960s vintage member of the then-new conservative movement, I remember us focusing on the 10th amendment during the 1964 Goldwater campaign. It has been a staple of conservative thought, and the continued dormancy of 10th amendment enforcement has been one of the failures of our now half-century-old movement.

But just as the Tea Party movement in so many ways seems to represent the 2.0 version of our movement, so I again thought about the 10th amendment anew. After about 10 seconds’ thought, it struck me that the best way to revive the 10th Amendment is to repeal the 17th Amendment — which changes the first paragraph of Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution to provide that each state’s senators are to be “elected by the people thereof” rather than being “chosen by the Legislature thereof.” (As I Googled the topic, I found out that Ron Paul and others have been talking about this for years. It may be the only subject that could be proposed and ratified at a constitutional convention with three-fourths of the state legislatures.)

That’s a fabulous idea. Let’s let the much cheaper local whores do the bidding of the corporations. These poor companies are going to have to spend a lot more money if they expect to buy 435 House seats and endless local and state offices, so any break they can get would be good for the economy.

But as long as we’re going for constitutional amendments, why not get rid of the House of Lords altogether?

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