The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Among The Reasons We Keep Returning Knobs To Congress

Posted on | November 1, 2010 | 6 Comments

by Smitty

TrogloPundit noted a survey saying roughly 2/3 would like to flush the Congress as a whole. Given our population size, the argument that we can’t find equal or better talent in the population for any seat is specious. And if the argument has merit, say, for Federal Reserve Chairman (oops, we don’t vote for that chap) then we should be asking ourselves: why is the system rigged with so many failure points?
But back to the systemic drivers for keeping the devils and succubi we know: the seniority system drives a Prisoner’s Dilemma of sorts. What to do?
To quote something I wrote over at NTC News, let’s do this

Every Congress must win approval from two thirds of the state legislatures in the 18th month of the Congress, or none of the members of the Congress are permitted to run for re-election for their current seat.

Note that this is not an individual term limit, but, rather, a global kill switch for the entire pack of louts. By default, the Congresscritters are gone. Most of the time, they will clear the approval wicket. The 111th Congress would have been down the tubes, and we’d have primaried fresh faces (careful with the vowels in ‘faces’) this Spring.

Comments

6 Responses to “Among The Reasons We Keep Returning Knobs To Congress”

  1. R L Hicks
    November 1st, 2010 @ 3:16 pm

    The Founders had something like that going on the other side of Capitol Hill…until the save-the-worlders pushed the 17th Amendment.