There has been much gnashing of teeth over the past several weeks over what pathetic choices we have for president. And there has been much creative writing about what can be done to ameliorate the situation. One writer in the WSJ went so far as to propose that after his victory Trump voluntarily resign so that Pence could become President.
Yet the solution is right before our eyes in a document almost 230 years old. The Constitution does not give the power to elect the President to the People. Because the founders were not democrats and did not create a democracy. They believed a mixed form of government to operate as a republic would provide the best rule. As stated in the Federalist #68 regarding the selection of the President:
It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.
It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.
It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder. This evil was not least to be dreaded in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States. But the precautions which have been so happily concerted in the system under consideration, promise an effectual security against this mischief. The choice of SEVERAL, to form an intermediate body of electors, will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements, than the choice of ONE who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes. And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.
Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.
Alexander Hamilton didn’t get everything right.
The People are not about to elect a president. They are about to elect 538 electors who shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves. The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President.
So the question becomes, are there enough patriots among the 538 electors to vote for someone other than the two deplorable and irredeemable candidates put forth by the non-constitutional political parties so that neither of them has a majority of the votes cast? And if so, who should receive the third highest number of votes?
1. We the people aren’t electing electors. Their names appear on no ballots
2. Today’s “elites”, to include the electors in theory, have nothing to recommend them. The likes if Kerry, Bush, etc., are a far cry from the founders. We need a term besides “elites” to use. Navy SEALS are elite. Today’s political class are not.
3. We need to put our faith in separation of powers, not the electoral college. But that will require undoing most “progressive” “reforms” of the past century–direct election of Senators, one man one vote, Congressional prerogatives, etc. Never gonna happen.
1. You are incorrect, we are electing electors. Check your state laws. You are correct, their names are not on the ballot. Fix your state laws.
2. Ruling class works for me.
3. Correct. But four years of Hillary may change some things.
Really? So who are you voting for for elector then?
How about “self anointed elites”?
Are the electors likely to be “ruling” or “country”?
Electors are chosen from among our irredeemably corrupt political class [selected by the party for each candidate, the election chooses which party’s selection gets to vote]. They will either vote as they are ordered by that political class [from both wings of the UniParty], or . . . inconvenient and possibly terminal things will happen to them. If they select, somehow en masse, someone who is not one of the major party candidates, a) that person will either be someone who has already run and been resoundingly defeated, or b) someone who has not run at all and either will be seen as someone who is being imposed on the American people in defiance of the Constitutional order and without consent of the governed. They, and their government, will be seen as illegitimate, and the dance will be on. Further, there is no one, no Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, or Cincinnatus waiting in the wings to be selected that would be accepted by a wide enough span of the American people to avoid that.
If it goes to the House, after this particularly contentious and violent campaign, the ones doing the voting will be the House members who are part and parcel of that corrupt political class, and they will be voting only their own personal interests. Which will be to maintain the insupportable status quo. Which will collapse shortly.
There are no miracles. There will be no Messiah coming out of nowhere to save us. It is a binary contest; notwithstanding the Greens, the Libertarians, or the GOPe candidacy of “Eggs McMuffin” whose sole purpose in life is to divide the Republican vote to throw states to Hillary. Our culture is conditioned by our media. People have been Pavlovian-trained to expect a Deus ex Machina or some such to provide a happy ending and avoid dealing with unpleasant reality.
Reality is unpleasant, and getting worse. The can being kicked down the road has encountered a wall across the pavement. It is going to be one of the two. And dealing with that will have to be done simultaneously with both a worldwide economic collapse and one or more major wars that may include use of WMD’s by those hostile to us. It is what it is.
Americans have to choose which of the candidates are more loyal to the country and more protective of the American people; because we will live or die by both that choice and by the effectiveness of that loyalty and protectiveness.
Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla,
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus:
“Are the electors likely to be “ruling” or “country”?”
I’m afraid I have to agree with Subotai here.
And dealing with that will have to be done simultaneously with both a worldwide economic collapse and one or more major wars that may include use of WMD’s by those hostile to us. It is what it is.
We are house hunting in a red state and leaving California after 60 years. My wife is a third generation Californian.
I was having breakfast with my oldest daughter this morning. She is an FBI agent and considering retirement next year. She has been a leftie for a long time and we rarely talk politics.
A month ago at breakfast, she told me she will NOT vote for Hillary. She said, “I won’t vote for Trump.” I did not ask her this morning. I did send her a couple of items about Comey and her response was that the FBI “will be OK.” I’m not sure what that means.
This morning she did tell me she is thinking about moving after she retires. She plans to keep working but to take her FBI retirement. She is thinking about Texas or New Mexico.
I didn’t ask her why but I think I know. She’s feeling it too.
The electors are a nameless, faceless group of 538 people. Put names on them and things start to look better. Educate those electors and things start to look better. Get a record number of faithless electors who exercise their independent judgment and things start to look a lot better.
Here’s the sort of raw material that a database would pull from:
http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/09/who_are_alabamas_electors_in_t.html
An overview of relevant laws might be helpful:
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/G16/EC-Appointed.phtml
The present paradigm of American governance is failing- or perhaps I should say it has already failed, but only now are the consequences becoming obvious enough that they cannot be ignored.
It seems to me that any failing regime automatically does everything it can to survive, now matter how disastrous, stupid or futile- and the present leftist American regime is no different.
Thus, it does many things that are intrinsically stupid, but lengthen its hold on power, which is its only real goal.
Shrug. I agree with Subotai, as I usually do, that the long kicked can is about to hit a wall.
Good luck to everyone, because we’re all sure to need it.
“Good luck to everyone, because we’re all sure to need it.”
When we hope for “faithless electors” you know we are in really deep stuff.
I wouldn’t mind quite so much if the Ruling Class was at least competent. All they seem to be able to do is line their own pockets.
The Post Office is running the country. In more ways than one.
I was checking out the Democrat Party platform on their website the other day. I started wondering, Conservatives have a deep intellectual history of political philosophy like Russell Kirk and Edmund Burke and William F. Buckley, among others. I don’t believe Social Liberals have that deep of a bench. They seem to be making things up as they go along adding some new fad or imagined right every four years. Anyway, one of their main platform points was to save the Postal Service. Of all the things in the world to save, that has to be the most amusing.
I guess they want to turn it into a bank with the post offices also bank branches. It sounds to me like they want to steal the business from all the inner city currency exchanges. Why not, right? We’re already putting the Clinton Crime Family back in office, so we might as well turn the government into loan sharks.
Once the government has urban minorities owing them money, they’ll really be slaves. I fully expect organized riots and unrest in cities at an unprecedented level.
Grurray
A major theme in Jonah Goldbeg’s Liberal Fascim is the fact the Left in the US actively supress any attempts to connect them to their historic antecedents. With good reason.
“I guess they want to turn it into a bank with the post offices also bank branches. It sounds to me like they want to steal the business from all the inner city currency exchanges.”
That’s how they do it in Japan…
http://www.thejapanguy.com/how-to-open-a-japan-post-bank-account/
Yes, dozens of countries have post office banks, and we actually had savings accounts at post offices from 1910 to about the 1960s. The difference then was the relatively decentralized nature of the accounts (and the entire government). The money was required to be deposited at nearby national banks to keep the money local, and no lending was allowed. This latest scheme by Democrats like Elizabeth Warren is to provide loans. It’s a back door move to nationalize the banking system, while at the same time providing Soviet style service and Obamacare-level stability. So, sure, let’s bring back post office accounts just as long as we disband the Fed, balance the budget, and drastically reduce the Bureaucratic State. Otherwise it will lead to disaster and enslavement.
The progressive vision is we don’t get a choice. We will keep the government run banking system AND further enslave the dependency class to the government by loan sharking. About four years after that in implemented, the new proposal will be debt forgiveness for low income debtors, funded by government debt.
A progressive sees all human activity as being opportunities to be turned into income redistribution by the government in return for slavish dependency and political rent seeking opportunities. The model is American Indian reservations, as longed for by Senator Pocahantas.
Death6