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@jtlevy | |||||
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It’s true that GOP Senators putting party ahead of country, the rule of law, security of American elections against foreign influence, inter-branch accountability, & basic integrity are basically the Founders’ nightmare, violating their core sense of virtue in office.
But.
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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It’s also true that the Founders were just *wrong* about some important things.
Parties, partisan elections, a loyal opposition w a constant incentive to expose the incumbent’s wrongdoing— these are a more reliable route to accountability *overall* than relying on Virtous Men. 2
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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There is no democracy (no “republic” if you like) under modern conditions without parties. As far as we know, there can’t be.
They didn’t know that in 1787. They knew a lot! They were trying new things! In important ways what they did was very impressive in the circumstances.
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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But they didn’t know this important one, and they wrote their turned-out-to-be-false model of how things would work into our exceptionally-difficult-to-amend Constitution and procedures.
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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Impeachment— not only impeachment, but we’ll focus on that— isn’t well-designed for a system of parties.
There’s never been a successful removal of a president— and that’s not because there were no presidents who should have been removed.
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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It works OK for the removal of not-officially-partisan judges. But the executive is different.
Nixon was chased out of office with the threat of removal, but under the very unusual circumstances that the GOP had been all but locked out of Congressional power for 40 years...
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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*and* when the parties were still in their Jim-Crow-based cross-cutting ideological muddle— a situation unlikely to be repeated and based on conditions we wouldn’t *want* to see repeated.
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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The Nixon case fooled us into thinking the impeachment procedure wasn’t basically broken, if only we had virtuous heroes in the Senate in the Goldwater mode... and so we get disappointed in the Lamar!s of the world for not living up to the Founders’ ideals.
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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But that’s just not going to be a reliable mechanism for executive accountability in a world of parties.
We need to think about what such a mechanism could be.
/fun
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Jacob T. Levy
@jtlevy
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31. sij |
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Ahem.
"/fin."
I don't need a special notation to mark the end of fun; I just need to be my usual spoilsport self.
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l'état n'est pas moi
@one_uglyman
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31. sij |
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When you have a dedicated group (representing a minority of the population) that puts "party ahead of country, the rule of law, security of American elections against foreign influence" with assists from the judiciary, it would be difficult to design a gov that can withstand it.
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l'état n'est pas moi
@one_uglyman
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31. sij |
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This is a round about way of saying that in a democracy commitment to those institutions and the rule of law are mandatory. Without that commitment, how can they stand?
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