Let's talk Term Limits

[Doomsday]

debated by the public for centuries.

CENTURIES I tell you!

Nice job googling term limits for the first time. Keep reading.

 

[dbair1967]

I didn't say there wasn't.

You said you haven't found anyone who supports it that has actually studied it.

Plenty of people have studied it, and it was included as part of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America but did not pass.

 

[dbair1967]

CENTURIES I tell you!

Nice job googling term limits for the first time. Keep reading.

I didn't need to google it to learn about it, I have supported it since I was in college in the late 80's and early 90's.

If you like corruption and abuse of power, then yeah lets just keep the status quo.

On the other hand if you are fed up with things being done the way they are, politicians enriching themselves and essentially getting a free ride through life, bills that are constantly passed without actually being read/vetted, constant promises to voters broken etc etc then maybe you'll get your head out of your ass and join in.

 

[Doomsday]

You said you haven't found anyone who supports it that has actually studied it.

Plenty of people have studied it, and it was included as part of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America but did not pass.

NO specifics were offered and there's still none. My question from earlier you skipped, details of how it would look.. Nobody's really done ANY real work to sell it. It's only ever been just a useless buzzword.

It's just populist crap, sounds good to people until they actually study it.

 

[Doomsday]

I have supported it since I was in college in the late 80's and early 90's

Then it shouldn't be any problem for you to share some details of what it would look like. For example would you repeal the 17th Amendment while you're at it?

 

[dbair1967]

NO specifics were offered and there's still none. My question from earlier you skipped, details of how it would look.. Nobody's really done ANY real work to sell it. It's only ever been just a useless buzzword.

It's just populist crap, sounds good to people until they actually study it.

What fucking details?

The President has a two term limit, why can't congress and the senate have term limits? Many states and cities have term limits on various elected officials, why not our fucking federal people?

It's a ridiculous statement Dooms, arguing to "see details" WTF does that even mean for such a simple subject?

The only detail is how many terms you'd be limited to. The President has two terms for a potential total of 8 years, that seems like a good starting point to me.

 

[dbair1967]

Then it shouldn't be any problem for you to share some details of what it would look like. For example would you repeal the 17th Amendment while you're at it?

What's the 22nd Amendment about Dooms?

 

[dbair1967]

MYTH-BUSTING 101: ARE ELECTIONS TERM LIMITS?
April 2, 2014


By Nicolas Tomboulides
“We have term limits. They’re called elections!”
I’m sure you’ve heard it before. When stale incumbents are confronted with the idea of term limits, they love to trot out this one-liner and accuse term limits supporters of hating democracy. We’re told that elections alone will solve all of government’s ills, if we just give them a chance.

Make no mistake: what you’re hearing is a tactic. The permanent political class — Washington’s interlocking network of lobbyists and corrupt public officials — will stop at nothing to protect the status quo. Long-term members from both parties extort the system for personal gain. They receive lavish perks that most Americans in the private and public sectors never see in their lifetimes. Congress is a sweetheart deal, and the politicians know it. Even with term limits on the table, these insiders will not go quietly into the night.

To understand why elections aren’t term limits, we must first examine the number one determinant of electoral success: money.

On average, incumbents can raise five times as much money as their challengers, amounting to a per-race financial advantage of $588,822. This wouldn’t be a problem if the incumbents worked hard and earned campaign money on merit. Unfortunately, they don’t. Special interest money flows into incumbent coffers purely because a member has filed for re-election, or because they’ve used the aforementioned extortion tactics to shake down a private enterprise.
It adds up. Special interests contribute between 85%-95% of their PAC dollars on average to incumbents, not challengers or open seat candidates. Since 94% of incumbents win re-election, the generosity serves as an investment in favorable treatment down the road. Quid pro quo.

Meanwhile, on the challenger side, candidates have to spend every waking hour begging PACs and members of the community for smaller donations. A well-funded campaign is the only way for an outsider to earn name recognition and the voters’ trust. The Center for Responsive politics estimates the cost of beating a U.S. House incumbent to be $2.5 million. This enormous hurdle keeps most good candidates out of politics.

Many wonder how voters who support term limits could keep re-electing the incumbents they don’t like. On the surface, it’s a paradox, but a closer examination of how elections work provides an explanation. The financial might of incumbents creates a system in which very few citizens can run for office. Even if they’re eminently qualified to serve, they don’t have the connections necessary to successfully challenge a sitting congressman.

This results in having a class of challengers who are, for the most part, not biographically different from the incumbents they oppose. They hail from either big politics, big business or the corrupt nexus between the two. Voters are therefore given the “choice” between the devil they know and the devil they don’t. The lesser of two evils wins, but nothing really changes.

Enter term limits. Congressional term limits honor the right of the people to establish parameters for government service. The 75% of Americans who support them are following in the tradition of those who worked to pass the 22nd amendment, which put term limits on the Presidency.

Term limits shatter the stranglehold that incumbents have on congressional seats. When a long term legislator goes home, he takes his special interest bankroll with him. The result is more competitive, open-seat elections in which all candidates have a fair shot. Data shows that, in rare cases of open seat races, both candidates raise an average total between what incumbents and challengers get today. It’s a happy medium, ideal for legitimate competition.
To answer the age-old question, elections are not term limits. Rather, they are a process that can be improved by term limits. Incumbents would be denied the chance to exploit the system for electoral invincibility. Quality challengers would be given real opportunity, without professional politicians and special interests blocking the door.

 

[Doomsday]

What's the 22nd Amendment about

Not relevant. That's the executive, not the legislative branch. It's not even the same topic. Nice try at deflection though. You haven't given this any amount of thought at all. You don't know how it would be done, you don't even know the hurdles there are in getting it done. And you have no details even on what you would have it look like. You just want to trumpet it as a throw-around term which you have shown you really know nothing about.

To understand why elections aren’t term limits, we must first examine the number one determinant of electoral success: money.

Irrelevant. This would still be true and still IS true in states that have term limits for their legislators.

IT. DOESN'T. WORK. ANYWHERE. IT'S. BEEN TRIED.

You want to use the federal government to institute artificial turnover for the legislative branch just so you'll "feel" better about congress. Never mind that for the PEOPLE who like their reps and senators, whose reps and senators are honest and do good work for their districts, they arbitrarily gotta go too. Punish the good guys and gals for the sake of basically your feelings and deprive voters in districts other than your own, their choice for representation in Washington. Throw the baby out with the bath water. Further erode liberty.

Why do you want to limit MY choices for MY representatives? I sure don't want to do that to you.

 

[Doomsday]

The only detail is how many terms you'd be limited to. The President has two terms for a potential total of 8 years, that seems like a good starting point to me.

You would have to include in your new amendment, a repeal of the 17th Amendment. Unless of course you still want to keep 6 year terms for senators?

You want to make it 4 years for representatives instead of the two they get now? It feels like I'm talking to a 12 year-old.

WTF does that even mean for such a simple subject?

It's not nearly as simple as you believe it is, and you believe it is simple because you know nothing about it and haven't studied it.

 

[dbair1967]

We just don't agree Dooms

And yes, it is simple to do.

Get rid of career politicians. The Founding Fathers never intended to have them and we should strive to eliminate them.

 

[Doomsday]

I thank the founders and framers every day, for having the foresight to make populist shit like this really really hard to ever accomplish.

The Founding Fathers never intended to have them and we should strive to eliminate them.

You should read in the federalist papers why our founders believed it was of paramount importance, not to have term limits for locally elected representatives and senators. And why they took steps to prevent it. The FF never intended for us to have telephones, computers and cellphones either. Never intended for us to have machine guns, either. Silly argument.

And yes, it is simple to do.

It is NOT simple to do!
You gotta amend the constitution to ever get this, slick. It ain't ever gonna happen. Gingrich knew this all along, and included this shit in his "contract" as simply bait for dolts. Read his fucking book where he talks about it. It was never even a firm belief of his.

 

[dbair1967]

I thank the founders and framers every day, for having the foresight to make populist shit like this really really hard to ever accomplish.

You should read in the federalist papers why our founders believed it was of paramount importance, not to have term limits for locally elected representatives and senators. And why they took steps to prevent it.

You gotta amend the constitution to ever get this, slick. It ain't ever gonna happen. Gingrich knew this all along, and included this shit in his "contract" as simply bait for dolts. Read his fucking book where he talks about it. It was never even a firm belief of his.

First off, the founders were not in universal agreement on it. There was heavy debate and disagreement over it. But the one's that did support term limits cited the same reasons I (and many others) support it. There shouldn't be career politicians and having people up there too long made it more likely they wouldnt work for the people and would lead to corruption and other issues. (And it has)

As for Gingrich, I am looking for the article but he was just in the news in recent weeks supporting term limits.

 

[Doomsday]

It might shock you to learn that this year we have had EIGHT incumbents LOSE their renomination - their own party primary ousted them! The fucking system is working and the people ARE empowered to kick bums out if they so choose!

 

[dbair1967]

Clip on what Founding Fathers thought about term limits:

It is worth examining what the Founders believed about term limits and what, fundamentally, has gone wrong with our modern government that has expanded far beyond its originally intended bounds. That most Americans believe their government to be dysfunctional and corrupt should be a tip-off that there are deep problems at the heart of our institutions.

‘Rotation in Office’

The idea of term limits, connected to the notion of “rotation in office,” was popular during the early days of the American republic.

Founding-era citizens viewed term limits as a means to prevent corruption and distant, entrenched interests staying permanently in power. They worried that a lack of change in higher office could be destructive to republican government.

Under the Articles of Confederation, term limits kept representatives to three terms in any six-year period. However, after considerable debate, the idea was abandoned during the construction of the Constitution because many Founders were skeptical of forced rotation’s usefulness—though there were certainly strong advocates in its favor.

For instance, a 1788 pseudonymous essay likely penned by noted anti-federalist Melancton Smith suggested that while limiting terms in local elections was probably unnecessary, limits would provide a useful check on the power of federal legislators, who were “elected for long periods, and far removed from the observation of the people.”

The essay’s author worried that without a mechanism to push national legislators out of office from time to time, lawmakers would become “inattentive to the public good, callous, selfish, and the fountain of corruption.”

He continued to warn readers that “Even good men in office, in time, imperceptibly lose sight of the people, and gradually fall into measures prejudicial to them.”

Thomas Jefferson was also wary of abandoning rotation, and wrote to his friend Edward Rutledge in 1788, “I apprehend that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of president and senator will end in abuse. But my confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.”

But some of the Constitution’s strongest advocates rejected the notion that sweeping out legislators by law would reduce corruption.

James Madison wrote that term limits might actually lead to government dysfunction. He wrote that frequent elections were a better check on power than forcing legislators out of office by law.

Those who stood against term limits argued that regular elections by the people could be a better check on corruption than constitutional limits and that such restrictions would create their own problems.

Madison wrote in Federalist 53 that the higher proportion of new representatives swept into office due to term limits could lead to poor decisions and corruption from a wave of inexperienced legislators.

Madison surmised that the “greater the proportion of new members, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt will they be to fall into the snares that may be laid for them.”

Ultimately, the anti-term limits forces won out and the Constitution was ratified without them.

 

[Doomsday]

First off, the founders were not in universal agreement on it.

Nobody said they were. But the consensus was, this right needs to be protected and they took steps to do so. Just like they did for the 1st and 2nd Amendments. There wasn't universal agreement on those either.

As for Gingrich, I am looking for the article but he was just in the news in recent weeks supporting term limits.

He's never going to stop trotting out a reliable populist notion. Read his book!

Clip on what Founding Fathers thought about term limits:

Yeah. Read it! And keep reading and keep studying. They kept term limits OUT and made it really HARD to ever get them at a later time! FOR A REASON! LIBERTY!

 

[dbair1967]

It might shock you to learn that this year we have had EIGHT incumbents LOSE their renomination - their own party primary ousted them! The fucking system is working and the people ARE empowered to kick bums out if they so choose!

Its not working Dooms.

Now if people who voted truly took the time to inform themselves of the issues and where candidates stood, what they believed in, what their behaviors prior to elections looked like etc etc I'd agree with you, but they don't. Unfortunately we have a mostly ignorant base of voters.

I'm of firm belief that NOT everyone should have the right to vote. I don't believe in suppressing the vote for any particular "kind" of person, but if people can't answer even basic questions about our government, have some basic understanding of economics etc etc they shouldn't be able to participate. I also believe people that are solely dependent on the government for their way of life should not be allowed to vote.

I seriously doubt the Founding Fathers could ever foresee a time when the public was so uneducated/informed and that such a large % of people would become dependent on the government for everything.

 

[Doomsday]

The ONLY thing in this vein I would be in favor of, is modifying the 17th Amendment taking away 6 year terms for senators and making it two just like representatives have. Give the people more frequent ballot might. More chances to boot scum out. Hell, 6 years think about it - most voters don't even know who their senators even are after six years!

But I stop right there.

 

[Doomsday]

I seriously doubt the Founding Fathers could ever foresee a time when...

Same argument the anti gun crowd uses against the 2nd amendment. Same argument creeping up lately, on the 1st amendment as well.

What they DID foresee is that there are some things so vital and important they made them very hard to ever get done. Term limits is one of those. They foresaw populism and took steps to protect us from it.

 

[dbair1967]

It might shock you to learn that this year we have had EIGHT incumbents LOSE their renomination -

Not enough unfortunately