Who the hell is Bruce Braley?
Iowa Democratic Senate candidate, until very recently comfortably leading in the polls.
I agree that lawyers are vastly overrepresented in legislatures, but I kinda agree with the comment. If there’s one place you want lawyers, it’s on the judiciary committee.
Your “concern” is noted.
Relevance of comment? Oh, right, it’s you. Never mind.
I agree, but if that’s a standard we want to maintain, and there’s a case we should maintain it, then that means that lawyers shouldn’t head any other committees.
Perhaps this will ring a bell: 2006- “Culture of corruption”. Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, cronyism. Rode that horse right back into the majority.
Can you really say that the Republican Party wouldn’t have been a ton better off without Tom Delay and Duke Cunningham?
Well, maybe. There don’t seem to be many Senate committees that line up with specific professions:
There are obvious spots there for accountants, economists, retired military brass and engineers, but that’s about it.
Nope, still not relevant, but let’s play anyway.
Wouldn’t have mattered. Iraq was the issue. Your party’s general failure and irresponsibility, which have continued to worsen, are the cause of their minority popular support.
We don’t need a government made up of lawyers specifically, but expertise is important. The people who write the laws do need to understand what they’re doing and how the laws will work. If legislators don’t have that kind of knowledge, they’ll rely on their unelected staffers. Is that a better solution? The government should be accessible to citizens but we shouldn’t be disdainful of technical knowledge. That’s just stupid and it won’t lead to good government. Simplicity in government is a good guiding principle but it’s not supreme good or a virtue for its own sake. And Braley is talking about the Senate Judiciary Committee here. If there’s any committee where you can say “a lawyer should be in charge,” that’s probably the one.
It’s probably not what they had in mind. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, though. The founders of the USA weren’t psychics. They didn’t envision a country of 310 million people and the complexities that go along with it, to say nothing of the ways technology and the national and global economy have changed. They laid out some principles that were good (and others that weren’t) and deserve credit for that much, but .
You may recall Mitt Romney made some similar remarks in 2012. It didn’t go over too well.
Of course. And I’m sure you’ll urge Republicans to support a good Democrat over a bad Republican when pigs fly out of your ass.
Iraq was certainly a big issue. But elections aren’t generally about just one issue. Democrats ran on the “culture of corruption” line and promised to be different. Given how close the Senate races in Virginia and Montana were, I’m sure that swayed a few votes. Especially in Montana, where Conrad Burns was implicated in the Abramoff scandal.
Given Montana’s redness, I think there’s no question that minus Republican corruption in the Abramoff affair, the Republicans hold the Senate in 2006.
I’ve done it on many occasions, as well as voted that way. I make endorsements every election, because I’m just so influential, and I always endorse a few Democrats.
For example, I prefer Warner in Virginia to Gillespie.
It’s conservative but not that red. Max Baucus was elected to six terms (his seat has belonged to the Democrats since 1913) and Democrats have held the governor’s mansion in Montana since 2005.
Warner’s already in office and he’s very likely to be re-elected. If you ever call for a Democrat to beat an incumbent Republican, let me know.
Grimes over McConnell. He’s part of the problem.
Now I’m not immune to the overall strategy aspect. I would shed no tears if Warner fell and Grimes failed. But when I actually have to vote, I vote for the best candidate. I voted for Nelson over Katherine Harris, and Kerry over GWB.
Bad Republicans hurt the Republican brand, something which I would think we’d all agree on given that whole threads have been started in this forum about the damage done to Republicans by bad officeholders and candidates.
There we go. That was only a little like pulling teeth. 
How do you know that?
Hint: You don’t.
Well, that alone does qualify him; no gaffe.
Based on what?
Even if true, isn’t that what you’d *expect *at the polls for the Reality & Responsibility Party?
It qualifies you to make laws, at any rate.
Come now, no modern republic can do without them, no more than it can do without career civil servants. Government is too complicated a business to be left to amateur “citizen legislators”; those might have a legitimate role to play, but it can and should be no more than a marginal role.