Some thoughts on the NRA and the DISCLOSE Act (which looks like it may be dying or dead, thankfully):
The lesson of McCain-Feingold fight is that if you see legislation that fundamentally violates constitutional rights, kill it. Do not try to minimize the damage. Do not try to get the best deal you can. Do not count on even a John Roberts-led court to do the unpopular work and strike it down. Do not count on any other part of our political or judicial system to step in. Do not collect “Go” or pass 200 dollars. Kill it, kill it, kill it before it can put down roots.
Because we have a governing class that literally “doesn’t care” about the Constitution. As far as they’re concerned, the Commerce Clause ensures that Congress can pass any idea that pops into its members’ heads if the votes are there. Ben Stein tells how the White House press office told him that no enumerated power in the Constitution or federal law was required for Obama to fire the head of GM. This crew thinks that the Constitution ensure the government’s right to require citizens to purchase health insurance. As Charles Kesler noted, “TARP, for example, was an unprecedented delegation of legislative power to the Treasury secretary, of all people. It was a desperate, essentially lawless grant resembling the ancient Roman dictatorship, except that the Romans wisely confined their dictators to six-month terms.”
Up against a crew like this, for whom the Constitution is a dusty museum relic, you don’t take the best deal available.
As I’ve often said, I think that George Bush should have been impeached for signing McCain-Feingold. In doing so, he blatantly violated his oath of office.
Of course, the people who would have had to impeach Bush were also the ones who had sent McCain-Feingold to him in the first place, thereby violating their own oaths of office. Division of powers failed here.
The difference is that the people who voted for it at least pretended to think that it was constitutional. Bush said that he was signing it despite his doubts and was hoping the court would fix it. It was political cowardice, and an admitted violation of his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
First up should have been McCain and Feingold.
McCain Feingold was an act of cowardice (fear of political fall-out) stupidity (because all it would do is aid his enemies) and dereliction of duty, since it violated the Constitution. Bush should have vetoed it, pure and simple. It is the major reason why I found it hard to support McCain. If McCain had been elected, I’m not sure any of the recent political outcomes would have differed much at all from what we got with Obama, except that the health care reform would have been more watered down, and we would also have Immigration Amnesty and possibly Cap and Trade rammed down our throats as well.
Well put, Doug. Even though I held my nose and pulled the lever for McCain as the lesser of two evils, I really do think we’d be worse off in some ways with McCain at the helm. At least The One, by tacking so far to the left so quickly has awakened many of the apethetic masses to the loss of their country. McCain would have been more of the gradual slip we’d seen under Bush, and because he would have had an (R) after his name he would have gotten more of this crap through just as you say.