Then none was for a party,
Then all were for the state;
Then the rich man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great;
Then lands were fairly portioned,
Then spoils were fairly sold;
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.
Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than a foe;
And the Tribunes beard the high
and the fathers grind the low;
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold;
And men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Horatius
Rob Goodman in an article at Politico outlines plans by which Democrats may stage what amounts to a coup to seize political power for generations:
For the opposite course, we could look to a left that is already building the case for court-packing, envisioning a Democratic president and Congress exercising their legal power to add two or more new justices to the Supreme Court. Or we could watch an activist base that is pushing the Democratic Caucus in Congress, however haltingly, toward procedural confrontations over immigration and court nominations. But the most detailed case against the Return to Normalcy—let’s call it the Normal Is Over side of the debate—is advanced by the political scientist David Faris in his new book, It’s Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics.
Faris’ response to the Normalcy program is that there is no value in conserving a burning house. The endangered state of American liberal democracy, he argues, calls for emergency steps from Democrats and the left. They should take advantage of legal and constitutional silences to “transform American politics in a lasting progressive direction,” Faris writes. “Doing so will require party leaders to pursue policy changes that will be ridiculed by their opponents as outrageous affronts to democratic decency and received by their own voters with puzzlement or even shock. They need to do it anyway.”
The list of those changes is dizzying. Grant statehood to D.C. and Puerto Rico, and break California in seven, with the goal of adding 16 new Democrats to the Senate. Expand the Supreme Court and the federal courts, packing them with liberal judges. Move to multi-member House districts to roll back the effects of partisan gerrymandering. Pass a new Voting Rights Act, including nationwide automatic voter registration, felon enfranchisement and an end to voter ID laws. Grant citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants, creating a host of new Democratic-leaning voters: “Republicans have always feared that immigration would change the character of American society. Democrats should reward them with their very worst nightmare.”
All of these steps, Faris points out, could be achieved without amending the Constitution. They would rely on new legislation, but more important, on Democrats abandoning any lingering commitment to a norm about power: That legislation cannot have the explicit goal of securing a lasting partisan advantage.
Go here to read the rest. The idea that Democrats have been playing the political game cleanly up to now is so risible that only the most hardened Democrat partisan could entertain it without laughter. That this scheme is being bruited about while the Republicans control the Federal government and the majority of the states is a sign of the rising madness afflicting the port side of our politics. If all this is to be taken seriously, and perhaps it should be, I would have a few modest suggestions for the Republicans:
- End the filibuster rule in the Senate. When the Democrats eventually retake the Senate it is a dead certainty that the filibuster rule will be one with Nineveh and Tyre, so the Republicans will be merely taking a preemptive move that is coming anyway.
- Double the number of District and Circuit Court Federal judges and pack them with young Republican judges. The Supreme Court should be expanded to 59 seats. If it is going to behave like a super legislature, it might as well have the size of a legislative chamber.
- The joint resolution admitting Texas to the Union allows Texas to be divided up into four states. That should be immediately implemented.
- Red States, controlled by Republicans, wishing to do so, should pass legislation petitioning Congress to have those states divided into two or more states. The Republican controlled Congress should swiftly grant such requests for Red States to divide and multiply.
- Pass legislation doubling the time for immigrants to apply for naturalization.
- Pass legislation banning felons from voting in Federal elections.
- Pass legislation establishing national voter ID in Federal elections.
- Pass civil rights legislation making ideology a protected civil rights category.
- Pass legislation granting independence to Puerto Rico.
- Pass legislation retrocessing the District of Columbia back to Maryland except for the areas surrounding the White House and the Capitol. Such retrocessing of a portion of DC back to Virginia in 1846 occurred, so there is precedent for this.
- The executive agencies should be withdrawn from DC and parceled out to red states. The State Department in Indianapolis would be a nice start.
Add your additional proposals in the comboxes. That such naked partisan moves would be a disaster for the country I have no doubt. Our politics are becoming a cold civil war. I fear the civil war will not remain cold.
The Left didn’t play dirty? Sure they did. It was just in the old ‘good cop/bad cop’ framework. Let some of them get dirty and mean, while the others took the high road – and then they all got together and hugged and high-fived each other after the next victory.
I think the thing that’s killing them is that everything they’ve done over the years is being thrown back at them, and the usual attacks aren’t working.
BTW, on a side note. I still keep getting hit by virus attacks about every other time I try to stop by TAC. Page error, then viral attack. Just FYI
We are aware of the problem Dave and we are attempting to have our tech gremlins resolve it. Being hacked is fun.
You must be doing something right if you’re being attacked. Keep up the good work.
For the country, I think giving DC back to Maryland is the right move to solve the “Taxation without Representation” problem. But as a Maryland resident, I don’t like the idea of tilting the state further left than it already is.
I really like #11, just on security grounds.
The statesman and the patriot have good will for the common good. Felons have besmirched their good will for the common good and repudiated their sovereign personhood. Therefore, felons do not vote.
Advocating a cold war is not good will for the common good but the advancement of tyranny using “useful idiots”
“This nation is conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”. A. Lincoln. Those who propose otherwise must be exiled for the sake of the common good.
The joint resolution admitting Texas to the Union allows Texas to be divided up into four states. That should be immediately implemented.
Not so fast – that could dilute the rural vote, unwittingly turning Texas blue, or at least 3/4ths blue. A southeast Texas centered around Houston would be blue, a central/southwest Texas centered on Austin/San Antonio would be blue, and a northeast centered on Dallas would be blue. About the only section that would stay red would be a Northwest, and even that is iffy.
Doing so will require party leaders to pursue policy changes that will be ridiculed by their opponents as outrageous affronts to democratic decency
Haven’t they been doing that for decades?
The Devil as always c matt is in the details. Put Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas in one state and carve up the remainder into three states. Gerrymandering, it wouldn’t just be for Congressional districts any longer!
538 had an interesting article about dividing Texas up into five new states:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/messing-with-texas/
“Felons do not vote”
Actually, felons who have served their prison sentences and returned to society have been able to vote in the vast majority of states for decades. It only became an issue in Virginia because VA was one of only 3 states that, until recently, banned felons from voting for life. Also, given the large number of crimes that are defined as felonies these days (e. g., lying to federal investigators even unintentionally), “felon” does not always equate to “violent, dangerous criminal”. If you’re going to adopt the notion that anyone who commits a felony should lose an essential civil right for life, then a much narrower definition of “felony” is in order and it should be reserved only for violent crimes.
Elaine Krewer:
Felons who have served their sentence and have been rehabilitated ought to be able to vote. It was Hillary Clinton who wanted felons still in prison to be able to vote.
“Felons who have served their sentence and have been rehabilitated ought to be able to vote”
I agree. I don’t recall Hillary or anyone else of national stature pushing the notion that people currently in prison should be able to vote, but maybe I wasn’t paying close enough attention. Perhaps when discussing this issue it should be made clear whether “felon” means anyone who has or has ever had a felony conviction on their criminal record (which is what I always understood the term to mean) or refers only to persons CURRENTLY in prison or on parole/supervision due to a felony conviction.
“Our politics are becoming a cold civil war”
Does no one read Carl Schmitt anymore?
Schmitt, a Catholic conservative, argues that every realm of human endeavour is structured by an irreducible duality. Morality is concerned with good and evil, aesthetics with the beautiful and the ugly, and economics with the profitable and the unprofitable. In politics, the core distinction is between friend and enemy. That is what makes politics different from everything else.
The political comes into being when groups are placed in a relation of enmity, where each comes to perceive the other as an irreconcilable adversary to be fought and, if possible, defeated.
“Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms itself into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively, according to friends and enemy.” “The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism,” Schmitt wrote.
Of course, he denies the possibility of neutral rules that can mediate between conflicting positions; for Schmitt there is no such neutrality, since any rule – even an ostensibly fair one –represents the victory of one political faction over another and is merely the temporarily stabilised result of past conflicts.
Mary De Voe & Elaine Krewer
Perhaps, there is something to be said for the practice, common in Europe, of imposing loss of civil rights, for a fixed term or for life, as part of the sentence?
Michael Paterson-Seymour: Thank you. The question remains. How can anybody choose for a nation when they have violated the nations’ laws and their own sovereign personshood?
A rehabilitated felon may have come around to his place in society and the culture. The felon unrehabilitated: never.
Hillary’s proposal of letting felons in prison vote was not implemented.
Maybe if, since 1973, they had not murdered 63 million of their own . . .
Jonathan Swift would have suggested they should eat them.
“I always wondered why the Democrats were such mollycoddlers of the criminal class, and then the obvious answer dawned on me: crooks, grifters, rapists, thieves, con men, welfare cheats, burglars, wife beaters, flim flam artists, antifa scum, homicidal maniacs, gang bangers, terrorists, and child molesters are all natural Democratic constituencies, so they’re just pandering to their voter base.” Gorillapundit