Yeah Cruz is pretty bad. I don’t think too many cons would shed a tear if he lost his election.
1 Like
This I agree with. We need to stop with this deification of the founders. Just ordinary men.
They were writing a constitution for a small, agrarian republic that in a world where mercantilism was still the dominate economic system and would be for another half a century. For a slave holding society. For a society where women, free blacks and non-property owning whites were disenfranchised.
And they made some epic mistakes. Their original version of the electoral college failed miserably in the elections of 1796 and 1800, requiring the 12th Amendment to fix. And the electoral college has worked as intended exactly once in history, that being the election of 1824 and it was a disaster, ending in the corrupt bargain that made Adams president. The best we can hope for is that the electoral college simply affirms the popular vote, but that has not happened on four separate occasions. And there is always the danger of a contingent election in the House of Representatives or Senate.
But far more than the MANNER of electing the President is the very INSTITUTION of the Presidency, which has grown insanely powerful and is in desperate need of neutering. I don’t think the founders ever intended the Presidency to be anywhere near as powerful as it has become. But because Congress has made itself impotent and has passed open ended statutes, the President has all sorts of power at his disposal. In the early days, all statutes were passed with time limiting clauses, that automatically limited them to a certain number of years or months, after which they would automatically expire unless reauthorized by Congress for an additional period.
If the Presidency was reformed, the OCCUPANT would not be a big deal, since his power would be quite limited and Congress would be supreme.
3 Likes
in the final tally, trump wins by 20,000, loses the electoral college by 2.
major fraud declarations and massive amount of lawsuits, all for naught.
Allan
2 Likes
Agreed
They were ready to make Washington king.
Agreed
Agreed
Is it so much that they thought Congress would be more prominent or that they thought less power would wind up in the federal government and more in the states? After all, power has been creeping to the federal government for over 200 years.
1 Like
I agree with this also, save for I would say it’s the president who has too much authority. It’s the entire executive branch.
1 Like
I’d say both.
Yes, it is moreso the Courts that have empowered the executive with the doctrine that if the Constitution doesn’t say they can’t… they can. Completely ignoring the 9th and 10th Amendments. The Congress authority to make laws has been equally expanded beyond its constitutional limits pretty much to making any law they feel like. This is all a result of the 17th amendment and the fact that it cut the state legislatures out of the constitutional compact.
1 Like
I predict that the popular vote will be irrelevant to the outcome of the presidential election.
Interesting analysis. I flinched on first reading. On second reading, I agree.
The jurisprudence principle of “if it is not expressly illegal it is expressly legal” applies to citizens, not government.
Perhaps there has been a concerted effort to forget that the Constitution prohibits government, not we, the people.
I see it as two Constitutions. The first one forms, limits and restricts the government to protect state sovereignty.
The second (Bill of Rights) corrects omissions and protects indibidual sovereignty.
Of course, the second was a condition of ratifying the first.
This doesn’t make any sense. How the hell can you call Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio midwest? Why not just throw in Pennsylvania. None of these states are west.
That is a given.
None of them are west of the Mississippi either. 
Everything west of the Midwest (circled on the map) is the West, Pacific Northwest, and Southwest (and Texas).
The Heartland is located where the heart on the body would be.
I like this analysis. Certainly there is more with regard to the expansion of constitutional powers beyond my initial post. For instance, if they hadn’t tinkered with the compact by cutting the states out of it, perhaps the federal government would be too busy wrestling each other over the powers they do have to bother taking the powers they don’t from the states, and ultimately the people. We needed the state legislatures to have their voice in the federal system not only so they could jealously guard against federal encroachment of states authorities, but ultimately as the guarantor of the people’s rights. The two sort of go together. The federal government does not exist to protect the people from the states. Though it would seem this is exactly what leftists presume.
1 Like
Good post.
Another word for it the corn belt.
“I’m from the Midwest!”
…while standing east of the Mississippi. 
You have east coast, midwest, west and pacific coast…or west coast.
That’s how many sees it IMO.
1 Like
