The Right to Cruz

"For too long, members of Congress have abused their power and ignored the will of the American people. Term limits on members of Congress offer a solution to the brokenness we see in Washington, D.C. It is long past time for Congress to hold itself accountable. I urge my colleagues to submit this constitutional amendment to the states for speedy ratification."

That was Senator Ted Cruz talking to ABC News last January, talking about the Constitutional amendment that he introduced in the first week of the year. It was the second time that he had introduced an amendment with the goal of establishing term limits for Congress, the first being two years earlier in January of 2017. A FOXwing friend of mine posted the article on his Facebook page yesterday. Knowing him, it's easy to presume that he thought it was something new. I have friends on both sides of the aisle who think that this would be a good thing (in fact, Beto O'Rourke proposed the same idea back when he was running against Cruz in 2018,) and I commented with my usual response:

It's tempting to go off on a tangent here. J____, in recent posts,  has made it obvious that he strongly disapproves of Socialism, so it would be easy to rib him a little for suggesting that anyone should start drawing on Social Security. But he's also made it pretty obvious that he doesn't know what Socialism is, much less Democratic Socialism, so I think the point would be lost on him. But anyway... 

There are lots of articles out there about why term limits would be a bad idea, and why they are not in the Constitution, but they're mostly just variations on the reason that James Madison gave in Federalist Paper #53: 

"[A] few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them"

In other words, instead of offering "a solution to the brokenness," it's more likely to create brokenness, because a newer, less experienced Congress will susceptable to bribery and other forms of influence,effectively handing the control of government to lobbyists and special interests. There is also the tendency for new Congressmen to try to codify the personal prejudices of both themselves and their constituants without regard to the civil and human rights of the people they are supposed to be representing, or for their health, safety and welfare. Samantha Bee made that abundantly clear on a segment of her show Full Frontal back in 2016. 

But for me, the biggest problem is that it is simply anti-democratic.

Ted Cruz was the one who proposed this amendment. Now, I don't like Ted Cruz. He's an economically ignorant dominionist who tends toward Fascism. He says stupid things. He does stupid things, and even the people on his side don't like him.  But he represents a different part of the country from where I live. I can't vote for him or against him. A term limit would be a sure fire way to get rid of him.

But the majority of voters of his district chose him, whether I like it or not. And that is their right. And in my opinion, the right to vote -- and the right to vote for the candidate of your choice -- should be sacrosanct, and not be taken away or diminished. As Hillary Clinton said recently, "One of our most precious rights as Americans is the right to determine who our leaders are." We already have voter purges, precinct closures, gerrymandering, voter ID laws, and court decisions like Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo that give wealthy people more undue influence on government-- policies that already take away the right to vote or diminish the effectiveness of the individual's vote. We don't need another policy that takes away the voice of the people.