It’s interesting that you would call that a “problem”. Isn’t it more of a problem to violate the right of the governor to execute his responsibilities in appointing a replacement? The governor is no less an elected official, and if appointing replacements is in his job description, then he has the right to appoint replacements at his discretion.
Your charge of “partisan pouting” is amusing in light of the fact that you would undermine the rights of an elected official in favor of “fairness”, amounting to nothing more than the maintenance of numbers that constitute political advantage. Who is the partisan here again, exactly?
Laws do tend to get passed in response to actual situations more often than to theoretical ones. There’s no coincidence.
No, and why should it be?
Kennedy’s brain tumor was foreseen? By whom?
Did you miss the part where such an appointment would itself have been along party lines?:dubious: How do you justify the people getting stuck with a Senator of the other party than the one they chose?
Not at all. They were more worried about an entire uncompleted term of antagonistic “representation”.
Someone give that crocodile a hanky.
It’s in the damn bill.:rolleyes: You know how to Google, don’t you, Steve? Just put your fingers together and type.
Then tell us please, in what way would this final bill be different if it were the case? Once you’ve gone and found out for your own damn self what it does, instead of “wondering”, do come back and tell us. And bring pie.
Isn’t it an even bigger problem to put this alleged “right” of one of the people’s hired hands over the rights of the people themselves to choose their representatives? Isn’t it an even bigger problem than that to put the “right” of one party to have filibuster power over the good workings of democracy itself? That’s bizarre.
Why can’t you folks just be happy that Kennedy’s dead?
I don’t know. Maybe we can ask Romney whether or not they ever favor Republicans for anything.
Fact is, the people voted for Ted Kennedy. They did not vote for the Democratic candidate, they voted for a Kennedy. Now that he is gone, who’s to say who they will vote for?
You people are assuming facts that are not in evidence. The only fact here is that the legislature quite literally fixed it so the Governor has no choice in the execution of his duties. In this case it’s irrelevant because the Governor is in on the fix, but that doesn’t make it right. Isn’t that why we have separation of powers, to prevent things like this from happening?
As Mr. Moto points out, the idea that this was a process of continual improvement towards democracy is strained, at best, because in 2004 the “appointment until the special election” option was expressly proposed and expressly rejected.
And to be clear: there’s nothing in this question that’s remotely an indictment of Democrats alone, in my mind. We have only to look at the various gerrymandering efforts of Republican-controlled legislatures to realize that, as if there were any doubt in the first place.
But while gerrymandering efforts can have thin (OK, virtually translucent) rationales for change and even reversal from year to year (“Hey, the population and demographic changed, so THAT’S why we shoudl redraw this district to look like a twisted dodecahedron!”) the example in Massachusetts is a bit more laid bare. And even then, we have exactly two changes… hardly enough to base any sort of judicial action on.
I think from a personal, we’re-all-buddies-here-on-the-message-board level, it’s kind of ridiculous to not acknowledge the Massachusetts action as nakedly partisan, just like countless Republican actions have been. No claims about the purity of either party, OK?
But from a more official, judicial-remedy type standpoint, two times doesn’t come near enough to establishing a pattern. So the answer to Dorf’s inquiry is, quite simply: there’s nothing to be done. And since the EFFECT of the decisions in Massachusetts has been (thus far) to guarantee only that a departing Senator will be replaced by a senator from his own party, I can’t get too worked up over this violation of democracy.
Can you stick to the discussion rather than stumbling into irrelevancies? I responded directly to what you said and you go off on not one, but two tangents. Give me a break.
Except, wouldn’t the 2004 (defeated) Republican amendment have done what this bill did: allow the governor to appoint an interim senator until a special election could be held to fill the seat?
Oh get off of it. Vacancies happen all of the time. Just ask any voter in Minnesota or Missouri or New Jersey or Pennsylvania, just to recall a few recent cases involving the Senate. Certainly a person of normal intelligence and reasonable foresight could have planned for a possible Kennedy or Kerry incapacity or death, or even a case involving a Massachusetts senator seventy years down the line.
If it 's so simple, I’m sure you will have no problem citing it for us. Do your own work here.
And to continue my trend in this thread of shamelessly stealing content from the linked blog, one of the blog’s comments says:
That’s an interesting thought. Suppose this had happened in Minnesota during the Ventura (I) governorship, and both Dems and Repubs had joined together to deny interim appointments to the governor and then switched the law back after a (D) or an ® was safely back in power?
Again, I don’t think there’s a problem with it. There isn’t anything in the 17th Amendment that disallows the legislature from using the powers granted there for partisan purposes, either to their own advantage or to squash the advantage of another party.
Of course, the voters may not approve of their doing so, but then they can voice their disapproval at the polls.
It will be official on January 19, the day of the general election, although you’ll realistically know as of the December 8 primaries.
What is your objection to democracy? :dubious:
Not with a restriction on party affiliation. Or else they wouldn’t have bothered, right? Mr. Moto, do you really not know how to use Google, or are you simply putting on a passive-aggressive act for us? If you’re actually interested in knowing such a simple fact, then don’t whine about not having it spoonfed to you. :rolleyes: But then Bricker’s fantasized turd of an OP isn’t related to the world of fact either, so I guess the tone for this thread has been set.
Slamming self (party platform) serviant laws through in the legal manner is certainly legal - but if the laws are not what the people want, those who passed the laws won’t get re-elected.
Welcome to having Republican Government where the corruption in government can be replaced with fresh, new and different corruption every 2-6 years.
You are confusing me - your standard for a good bill seems to be that a requirement be present that an appointment has to be from the party of the officeholder leaving the vacancy. You castigate the Republican amendment in 2004 for not having this feature. Yet this legislation also lacks it, and you seem to like it fine:
And prior to the passage of the 2004 law, the Governor wasn’t entitled to appoint a Senator to a vacancy for the rest of the old Senator’s term. He could appoint a Senator to fill the vacancy, and that new senator would serve until the next biennial election, at which point an election would be held. The text of the pre-2004 law can be found here (thanks to the Internet Archive)
So the only difference between the law now and the law prior to 2004 is that now there’s a special election set to fill the vacancy after the temporary appointment, rather than the next general election.
I agree with the OP unreservedly. I am glad there is one more Democratic Senator in action for purely partisan reasons but the lack of consistency and fairness is appalling.
There’s a saying that Bush messed up once. It goes “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”.
I had hoped that the last 8 years were some horrible nightmare aberration and that the election of a black guy would bring America together like first contact with the Vulcans brought the Terrans in Star Trek together. But this last 8 month shitstorm of hyper-partisanship by the Republicans has pretty much made me give up on their party and conservatives completely. I’m pretty close to the point of never, ever voting for a conservative or Republican ever again.
Since January, Dems have given them tons of chances to come together and do good for America by passing good bills and reforms. I expected the usual partisanship; I did not expect birthers, tea-baggers, death panelists (from the fucking VP candidate even!), and fake town hall plants. We gave them tons of chances, and all we could get were 3 liberal Republican Senator votes on a stimulus bill (that they passed happily while Bush was in office) that was needed to save the American economy? 3 votes?
Republicans in Massachusetts or anywhere deserve no more consideration. I’ll admit that this was a partisan move by the Dems, I’m happy to actually. I’m happy that they are fighting back.
The thing you have to ask yourself is what concessions we’ve received from Reps and what is the likely behavior if Dems do not use dirty tactics? The answer to concessions is of course nothing, just more hatred and lies. And do you really expect Reps to not do something like this when they are back in power? Would going along with everything Reps in Congress and the states want lead to them allowing future Dem minorities to have more influence in government? Its time to end the charade and do whatever it takes to weaken their party.
The really stupid part of this whole thing is that the Massachusetts legislature could have gotten this right in the first place. Back in the Romney administration, it would have been perfectly reasonable for them to have passed a law requiring the replacement be chosen from a shortlist provided by the outgoing Senator’s party. They could have then just dusted off their hands and left that same law on the books indefinitely, and it would have produced the “correct” outcome then, and now, and a century from now when the Noodlecratic senator resigns while the governor is from the rival Bull Platypus party. It’d be a fair, and transparent, and democratic, and unpoliticized process, that everyone could agree to. But instead they decided to play this silly political game that produces the same outcome, but which puts the entire process under a partisan stink.