It has been pointed out many times already in this thread, but I guess it needs to be pointed out again: lobbying virtually never involves bribery.
Not really. You have 100 senators. 20 of them spend a year dedicated towards increasing their popularity among the public.
They introduce bills declaring July 6th as National Free Cup of Ice Cream Day.
They go on Oprah and talk about their abusive childhood and their triumph over a gas sniffing addiction.
They all adopt abandoned goats and llamas and open a Congressional petting zoo.
In short time these 20 Senators control 80% of the power in Congress because geniuses with internet access (aka the unwashed masses) throw all the support their way.
Now these 20 Senators introduce a new bill: a law to draft all red headed kids into the army.
“Well f-that!” the public cries. But it’s too late. It’s codified, because the minority held a majority influence for a brief period of time. It doesn’t matter that it’s not the will of the public or that the public certainly doesn’t support them NOW. They did earlier and that’s all that counts.
Let me give you another example as a flaw to your system. It’s a simple question: how many senators can the average citizen name? Out of 100 of them, how many can the name?
You’d be damn lucky if you could get to 5.
Obama
Clinton
Their state’s own Senators…
Maybe just. Obama and Clinton. Maybe not even that. It’s sad, but then, welcome to our voting public.
Conrad and Dorgan from North Dakota? I’m sorry guys, but no one knows who the hell you are. I don’t care if the founding fathers wanted to create a way to ensure every state had equal representation. The Controvert wanted to get rid of lobbiests. So from now on, each of your votes count as .001% of the total. Maybe you two should consider going on Oprah, or, maybe, bribing people, to get your popularity back up.
Perhaps true, but people aren’t likely to believe that who don’t want to, so it is more effective to accept it as a given when making an argument if it doesn’t matter one way or the other for the argument you are using.
Why, what a brilliant idea!I wish more people thought like you and I.
Probably wouldn’t work in practice. Any potentially unpopular communications to other political figures would wind up being secretly relayed via those familly members or as attachments to classified documents.
Other more effective means would no doubt be thought up and employed as well, I’m just pointing out that there are holes in this concept that are hard to plug.
Personally I’d love to see how this would turn out but I’m pretty sure it would take a while before the public would get accustomed to it enough not to flip out over every offhand remark spoken before morning coffee kicks in.
But now one can massage the whims of the people in October & hold power for two years.