ELDER PATRIOT - The great question for freedom loving people in the United States is why is Constitutional governance on life support? The answer lies with groups like the Republican Main Street Partnership (RMSP.)
There are 63 RMSP members from the U.S. House of Representatives. When you remove all of the obligatory “feel good” speech from their mission statement you are left with this, “Main Street is aligned with the governing wing of the Republican Party and centrist policymakers.”
The true purpose of this group is to provide cover for the votes of its members.
To illustrate how this works, let’s take the case of Leonard Lance. He’s a congressman representing the 7th District in NJ. This is the most conservative district in NJ. Lance, with the help of the Republican Party, runs as a conservative saying all of the right things on the campaign trail. And, the gullible voter laps it all up. The problem for Lance is he’s not a conservative. If he has too many votes supporting progressive legislation how will he answer the questions about his voting record by his ever-present primary challenger. What to do? Join the RMSP.
The RMSP exists to push through progressive legislation while providing maximum cover for it’s liberal Republican members. Remembering that the Democrats are in the minority, the RMSP accomplishes this by first assessing how many votes will be needed to push through a Democrat bill or addendum. Once they have determined how many votes will be required to insure passage, the RMSP studies each of it’s members districts to determine who can best absord the vote on their member’s record.
Now, congressmen are free to vote as they see fit. That is not in question. What is in question is why these folks operate in a deceitful manner? If they want to vote with the progressive movement they should at least be honest and upfront about it during their campaigns.
On the whole, congress has an abysmal approval rating but in questioning people they all love their representative. It’s because of groups like the RMSP and the glossy mailers (at taxpayers’ expense) highlighting specific popular votes determined by savvy media strategists (at taxpayers’ expense,) that make voters believe their representative is the one good one.
Over the years, legislation has passed that has served to remove house members from their electorate. James Madison has been widely recognized as the Father of the Constitution. He felt that the House should be viewed as the people’s house with representatives being held to account every two years. “The size of the territory matters, Madison argued, because in a small republic it is easy for a majority to communicate and unite on the basis of selfish interest or prejudice and thereby oppress the minority. In an extensive republic, however, there will be more people, a greater diversity of interests and views, and a greater distance over which those views must be communicated. This will make it more difficult for a majority to form on the basis of a narrow interest or harmful passion. In a large society, a coalition of the majority will be necessary in order to achieve an authoritative status, and its demands will have to pass muster with a great
variety of economic, geographical, religious, and other groups in society.”
Madison’s theory of representation was that House members should have small enough constituencies to represent them completely with a singular focus. It was his view that a person could ably represent a farming community or a manufacturing community, but not both simultaneously.
By the time the house had grown to 435 members the people were told that it had become unwieldy to conduct debates and votes. Since then, Representatives’ constituencies have grown to exceed 750,000. There are senators with smaller constituencies.
The result of this has fueled both the progressive and centrist movements. Hiding behind the need to placate one segment of their constituency over, other competing interests representatives have been free to accept lobbyists’ overtures at every opportunity. For the lobbyists, this has been made easy by having only a small number of house members to “sway” in order to pass their favored legislation. Obviously, their task would be made more difficult if they had 5-10,000 legislators to deal with. As well, no representative could withstand the scrutiny of an election every two years if they were forced to vote for the very narrow interests of a small constituent base and then violated that trust.