Limitless Cruelty
As is want to happen every now and then, I got into a debate over the PACT Act with a high school classmate of mind on social media. I’m sure many of you have been following this story. I’ll leave a little video below to catch people up in case they have missed it. Suffice it to say, my conversation with the former classmate was brief because he simply parroted the same talking points as Ted Cruz and Pat Toomey. It was easy to dispense of.
The conversation quickly went to term limits. I find this is a normal go to response when conservatives know they’ve lost an argument. They throw this out because they think it is something we can all get behind. They throw it out because they have a definite picture in their head of what that looks like. The see Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. We obviously see different people.
I know this will be an area of disagreement amongst people on both sides. We have a perfectly good mechanism for limiting someone’s time in Washington or Austin. They are called elections. Serving in Washington for too long doesn’t cause the level of cruelty and mendacity that John Stewart is describing. Ted Cruz has not effectively changed fundamentally. Those that knew him back in the 1990s have said he’s a jackass. I’d assume Pat Toomey has been the same guy all along as well.
The specific mechanisms that keep someone like Cruz in office are the same mechanisms that got them there in the first place. Term limits don’t prevent assholes from representing you. It just means it has to be a different asshole after 10 or 20 years. Fixing the mechanisms is something the Democrats in Congress have tried to do but have been unsuccessful because the Senate is where good legislation goes to die.
We can get a lot of change if we simply have computers draw congressional districts instead of political parties. What has been created has been a gap where only jackasses and extremists can slide in. According to the chart in the link, the vast majority of races are decided by more than ten points. If you draw those districts out then a lot more of them are competitive. If they are competitive it is a lot easier to defeat jackasses and carnival barkers.
However, the biggest responsibility is on us. Republican voters don’t like Ted Cruz. They know he’s full of crap. So why do they keep voting for him? Maybe it is to own liberals, but I also suspect they don’t want to do the homework to catch him when he is obviously BSing them. This is simple. If you don’t like the job Greg Abbott has done then don’t vote for him. If you think Ted Cruz is a lying sack of excrement then don’t vote for him. It’s really just that simple.
People generally don’t like to admit their judgement was wrong – I think this is what many GOP are suffering from. Also, in conjunction with the vets bill, I’ve been trying to find a list of currently serving Senators who have service in active duty military, like Tammy Duckworth. This is maddeningly difficult to find.
1I agree with Grandma Ada that many repugnanticans don’t want to to admit their judgement was wrong which is why it’s so easy for them to buy into things like the big lie. I also agree that they are motivated by hatred of Democrats. That’s why the more obnoxious and generally bonkers a repugnantican candidate is, the more they’re attracted to them. Cruz, Boobert, MTG come to mind right away, but there’s so many more.
2Term limits have been tried, repeatedly, at the state and various local levels.
While results varied, it seems to me that they tend to result in government by the amateurs, the uninformed, and the bought-and-paid-for tools. That is, they mostly seem to me to make things worse, not better.
3Joel Hanes @ 3,
It’s my opinion that term limits are needed.
It seems to me that the obvious ignorant amateurs, totally unqualified stooges, nutcases and crooks could be better filtered out if the qualifications for elected office were better defined and more stringent, just like it is for professions and careers outside.
4Papa – if you weed out the “obvious ignorant amateurs, totally unqualified stooges, nutcases and crooks” from being candidates you won’t need term limits.
5One big problem with term limits is that it inevitably results in government by the staff, not the elected officials. Since the staff has been around “forever” and the new guy/gal has yet to come up to speed about the numerous issues confronting them the staff becomes, de facto, the “experts” that the new guy/gal will be depending on to clue them in as to what the real issues are, what’s been tried in the past (and failed), etc. Even a staff that is not trying to run the show will have their opinions, not the new guy/gal’s opinions become the dominant ones.
Grandma Ada @1 —
“the full list of veterans elected to Congress last fall or returning to incumbent Senate seats that were not up for re-election this cycle:” can be found at
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/12/28/veterans-in-the-117th-congress-by-the-numbers/
There is a bit of analysis of the 91 total veterans in the 117th Congress., and then an embedded list.
6My problem with term limits is that they promote laziness. I usually don’t buy into anecdotes but I remember when Lee P. Brown was running for his last term as mayor. I overheard someone say, “I really don’t like him and he’s been ineffective, but he has only one term left so what the hell? Why not?”
Term limits ultimately don’t protect you from idiots and assholes. The problem is that people don’t recognize that serving in government actually takes skill and competence. It’s similar to the Florida law where they are allowing veterans to become teachers without a degree. The danger is in the assumption that any jackass can do what we do. It’s the same with government.
It fosters the idea that public service is a nasty endeavor that someone has to do, but hopefully not for too long. They think the less you know about it the more effective you will be. The notion is patently ridiculous. It would be the same as if I unilaterally decided I should command troops in Afghanistan or design a suspension bridge. Term limits don’t address that problem. It just means you have more opportunities to elect idiots that think we should run government like a “business”. Sure sport, good luck with that.
7My husband, who’s up for re-election this Fall, labels it as “we have a revolution every two years in this country. It’s called an election. If you don’t like what’s going on, vote the bas****s out.”
8In my experience in politics, term limits have a lot of negative effects, and none of the promised benefits. The most common effect has been to accelerate the “conveyor belt” of local and state politics. Where before a mayor might settle into a job and spend a decade or more trying to bring a town along, they instead lose their jobs after 8 years and have to either get out of politics or find another office.
Good news! The governor is also term-limited and is running for the Senate seat vacated by someone caught with their hand in someone else’s cookie jar. The Sec State is term limited and will run for Congress in a newly gerrymandered district. Our termed out Mayor can relax: His-or-Her Honor will have a new job in a nicer office very soon!
This Conga of Incompetence shimmies from election to election, with the net effect that no one ever learns their job, delivers on a long-term project or spends enough time on the bench to mature into a rational, effective player in the game.
Especially because, as soon as you reach a certain level, more of your day is spent in fundraising for the next gig than in actually doing the current gig.
That daily dollar dash leads to another consequence of term limits – what happens if there are no spots open when you’re termed out of this one?
Why, you go to work for the guys who have been funding you, and the way you can do that is because you’ve been working for them every day IN THIS CURRENT GIG.
Let’s face it, if you want a cushy place to land, you’ve better put some effort into fluffing your future up. And you do that by being an honest politician, like Joe Manchin, a term-limited governor who is now Senator Obstructs-A-Lot (see how that works?)
An honest politician – to the donor class, anyway – is one who, when they’re bought, stays bought.
9northwest pharmacy canada reviews Baycip care rx specialty pharmacy
10