A House Divided ?

It is popular these days for progressive pundits and their minions of intellectual dishonesty to claim that our government is broken. That the Constitution is somehow archaic and out of touch with modern needs. Of course this is only true when it stands in the way of their small minded schemes. But in fact it is working precisely as it was designed. Consider what is about to transpire.

In just a few weeks we are likely to see the House of Representatives vote to repeal Obamacare. This vote most likely will take place less than one year after the 111th Congress voted it into law 220-207. The vote last March was without a single yes vote from a Republican member of Congress.

When this vote to repeal is passed by the 112th Congress it will receive a minimum of a 242-193 vote in favor of repeal. This will occur if every Republican votes for repeal (they will) and every Democrat votes against repeal (they won't). The more likely vote will be something like 255-178 since 13 Democrats who voted against the original bill are still in the new Congress and have no reason to defend a bill which they opposed a year earlier. It is even possible that some Democrats who voted for Obamacare could switch and vote to repeal. Despite the historic gains made by Republicans, many Democrats were reelected with very narrow margins and it might be in their political interest to now oppose this unpopular bill. Regardless the vote to repeal will be an overwhelming repudiation of the original vote to enact the legislation.

Consider that within a years time, The House of Representatives will have gone from a complete partisan vote narrowly for the legislation, to a bipartisan large vote against the very same legislation. There are many reasons why the Democrats took a "shellacking" in November, but perhaps the single most galvanizing factor against the Democratic led 111th congress was their enactment and the process which they used to pass Obamacare. It is quite likely that had Obamacare not passed, which by any normal legislative process it should not have after the election of Scott Brown, the Democrats would not have suffered such staggering losses in November.  Indeed had Obamacare not passed the Democrats would probably  retained control of the the House.

When this vote to repeal occurs we will probably hear a great deal about how this proves that our government is broken. How, it will be argued,  can you run a government which can switch directions on such a major policy issue so quickly?

As it is essential to liberty that the government in general should have a common interest with the people, so it is particularly essential that the branch of it under consideration [the House of Representatives] should have an immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people. Frequent elections are unquestionably the only policy by which this dependence and sympathy can be effectually secured.

Federalist Paper 52

What these pundits either fail to understand or more likely deliberately ignore for their own purposes, is that a vote to repeal would be precisely what the Constitution was designed to do. To keep an out of control governing body from circumventing the will of the people they were elected to represent. As the author of Federalist Paper 52 (either Hamilton or Madison) wrote to convince skeptics in New York, this quick change in course is because the House is supposed to have " immediate dependence on, and an intimate sympathy with, the people"  and this is insured  by frequent elections  which "is essential to liberty".

A great deal of time, effort and indeed argument went into the drafting of the Constitution  The two year election cycle of the entire House  was one of the many checks put into the Constitution to restrain the power of government which was the Founders primary concern, 

 Most people do not realize that the Federalist position was not the more popular position at the time of the drafting of the Constitution. In modern day terms the Federalist were the Big Government faction whereas the Anti-Federalist were the Small Government faction. The so called Federalist Papers were written to explain to the many doubters that this new Constitution would protect the States and individuals from a large central government by the very structure they had created while allowing for a national government which could meet their joint needs.

Many of the Founding Fathers were opposed to the Constitution simply because it gave too much power to the Federal Government and they rightly saw that over time even the clearly spelled out restrictions written into the Constitution would eventually be eroded, leading to a tyrannical central government. For this reason, having lost the battle against ratification of the Constitution they insisted on what we now know as the Bill of Rights, the first Ten Amendments. This was done to insure that everyone understood that the governing document they had created in no way infringed on what they saw as man's inherent liberties. Even this was controversial simply because many felt by putting what they saw as such obvious natural rights of man into the governing document would give the impression that they were conferred by the government rather than the intuitive natural rights they believed in.

So if you believe that the purpose of government is to enact and carry out any factions agenda regardless of the will of the people, then indeed the Constitution is an archaic document which should be ignored. If however you believe as the most famous anti-federalist wrote in another archaic document "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" then you will understand that this flip in votes on Obamacare is precisely how our government is designed to operate. To protect We The People from the whims and dictates of petty little dictators and their scheming plans to perpetuate their power over us.