Way back during the interminable weeks between the 2000
presidential election and the final decision in Bush v.
Gore, I spent hours upon hours explaining to otherwise
intelligent and politically savvy folks just how this country
works. Most of these discussions centered on the Electoral College
and the media-induced confusion over its presumed complexities.
They usually began: “But Al Gore won the popular vote; shouldn’t
he be the president? Isn’t that the way a democracy works?”
Explaining that we are not a democracy but a constitutional
republic was not that difficult; most Americans still have some
notion of what our Constitution is, although many haven’t any idea
of what is actually in it.
The toughest thing, though, was trying to put over the idea
that, as envisioned and enacted by our founders, ours is a
sovereign nation of equally sovereign states. I would ask those
persuaded by the “popular vote” press pundits, what they thought
about the U.S. Senate; why it was created and how its members were
apportioned, and was it fair that Rhode Island and New York had
equal representation there? And finally, the way I usually wound up
these chats was by asking, “What exactly is the name of our
country?”
Yes, the fact that our Fifth Columnists of the Fourth Estate are
constantly agitating for the abolition of the Electoral College
should tell you just how vital it is to our constitutional form of
government, and just how much the thought of states’ rights
terrifies the left. And with good reason.
Very quietly, many states have made decided turns to the right.
In the last few years, they have voted to restrict abortion and
amend their constitutions to ban same sex marriage. Others, noting
the need for fiscal restraint, have begun to restrict the crippling
power of state and municipal unions, and to reform those entrusted
with the education of our children.
And this week, word is, that several governors are
exploring the possibility of refusing to establish the
healthcare exchanges mandated in Obamacare, with others poised to
join in, now that SCOTUS has essentially removed the penalties for
doing so. Still others have gone a step further by revisiting the
process of state
nullification of unjust federal legislation. And the surprising
thing is, not all of these are what would be considered “red”
states.
It’s a funny thing about our country; voters act one way when
electing state and municipal officials, and sometimes in an
entirely different manner when it comes to congressional and
presidential elections. Here in my state of Connecticut — a
liberal bastion, to be sure — we have had our share of Republican
governors, as have New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. My
husband likes to say that the people want a national nanny and a
local daddy.
What this all means is that many states, and more importantly,
many of the people are rediscovering the idea of just where the
sovereignty in the U.S. Constitution resides, even if the Roberts
Court has yet to figure it out. And the key to conveying the
essence of this to the rest of the country is the Electoral
College. Voters must be made aware that, should this nation ever
adopt the election of our chief executive by popular vote, many of
their votes would be rendered much more useless than they feel they
are now, as candidates would need only to cultivate the voters in
the most populous states while basically ignoring those in flyover
country.
The intentional constitutional friction between the states of
this vast nation was crafted by our founders as a way to guarantee
that the interests of small agricultural states would never be
threatened by those of the larger, more industrial ones; federal
sovereignty was to be invoked only in cases of the true common
good; national defense, tariffs, treaties and the like.
The only way to save this nation from an ever-tyrannical central
government — all three branches of it — is to restore the notion
that we are a union of fifty individual governments, as guaranteed
by the Tenth Amendment. Let us hope this reeducation manifests
itself in more bold action by the states, leading up to and
including November.
