Will the Right Eventually Openly Dump the Constitution?

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Right now here in the United States, the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party vocally claims to support and even revere the Constitution, seeing themselves as its correct interpreters. Coincidentally, their reading of the Constitution and Republicans' calls for how to improve the economy just so happen to advance a longstanding conservative agenda, slashing into liberal programs and disadvantaging Democratic-leaning constituencies. Republicans are now using calls for austerity to defund agencies like Planned Parenthood and to attack public-sector unions. During the Bush administration, civil liberties were openly and continuously defiled in the name of national security and the war on terror (admittedly, the Obama administration has been more continuity than the hoped-for change on this front).

In the future, will the Right see the Constitution as too much an impediment to its political goals and openly call for its replacement?

No. They will be destroyed politically if they tried it.

Two world wars did not curtail basic rights nor did the Big Red Scare of the 1920's nor did the MaCarthyite Commie scare lead to a repeal of constitutional rights. There is no situation so serious that would lead the states to repeal a single item in the Bill of Rights.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 06 Mar 2011, 6:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Some errors on your part....

1. Tea Party IS NOT "republican party." They are mostly a conservative/libertarian movement. Only time will tell if the Republican party co-ops them into the fold.

2. De-funding government programs is not attacking the Constitution. Of the multitude of government programs and agencies currently in existence, only a handful are Constitutionally authorized. Considering the US economy IS bankrupt and in danger of total implosion without very severe measures being taking to fix what's wrong, what else would you expect people to be proposing...more spending?

3. Up to now, both the left and the right have attacked the Constitution. They both want a society where people depend on government to run their lives. Libertarians are more "moderate" than either mainstream party.

I can't help but think of "The Business Plot" when it comes to corporations, their Right wing lackeys and respect to the Constitution. It isn't a problem with the Right, necessarily, but with it's backers misleading them into such un-American activities

Up until this last election businesses tried to play both sides. Obama's anti-business attitude and pushing legislation that was bad for the economy is what pushed businesses to heavily support Republicans over Democrats in this last election.

Big Business & Republicans go Hand in Hand. Democrats are not much better

The Republican Party has already coopted the Tea Party (see also the 2010 midterm elections). Many of the freshman Republicans in Congress are fire-eating Tea Partiers.

No, but their [mis]interpretation of the Constitution also goes with their calls for austerity both align with pursuing a right-wing agenda. Although a few in the Tea Party have expressed an openness to cutting the Department of Defense budget, this has been the exception. Mostly, they want to defund Democratic/liberal priorities while leaving GOP priorities intact.

Actually, yes, the right kind of spending—investment—is necessary to the long-term health of the U.S. economy. Things like education and training, infrastructure, and scientific research ensure long-term growth. In Keynesian theory, the time to pay down the debt is during an upturn in the economy; deficit spending can be useful in stimulating the private sector in a downturn.

The Tea Party is essentially an Astro-Turf movement. I have hoped the Republicans would distance themselves from it, thus separating Moderate Republican from the Crazies. Hope is not worth anything, apparently

They already have. Democrats and Republicans have openly dumped the constitution.


/Democrats and Republicans are both instruments of the right.

If anyone has lost their minds it is people on the left.

I'd say I agree with you that they're full of crap, but who cares? The Constitution is as dead as a doornail anyways. Or, to get a bit more specific, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments certainly are. Or that bit in Article I, Section 8 about Congress issuing declarations of war and all that? Laughable to think that in a Constitutional sense we have NEVER been at war with either Afghanistan or Iraq.

The other problem, of course, is that I fail to see how they're any less full of crap than any other group that finds certain parts of the document inconvenient.



Congress creates and passes budgets last I checked, not the Supreme Court. But perhaps I'm wrong. Please point me to the appropriate passage in the Constitution where it discusses the Supreme Court as defining levels of funding for programs, creating budgets, things of that sort.



Which is unconstitutional behavior precisely how?



Which simply shows that the neoconservatives learned from their liberal past (Trotskyist, even) that the Constitution is a "living, breathing document," that says what you want it to say whenever you want it to say it.




Nope. All they'll have to do is cite a case like Trop v. Dulles and excrete some mush about "evolving societal standards," or maybe sprinkle a little mumbo jumbo about the Commerce Clause meaning anything they want it to mean. Just like the Left does now.

But this assumes that what you're calling "the Right" will ever come into power after 2020 or so. It probably will not, whether your right-wing bogey man is a neoconservative tearing around the globe like a six year old on a sugar high imposing "democracy" at bayonet point, or even less likely, a fossil like Pat Buchanan. the sort of conservative who has issues with 700 or so US overseas bases, military treaties with about half the planet, and so on. US demographic trends for the Republicans are so ugly that once Texas goes the way of California they're done as a party who can elect a president, at least as the party is currently constituted. (And given the current crop of idiots passing themselves off as Republican "leaders," I'll go out on a limb and say they're already done. as far as the oval office goes..but the Dems might manage to shoot themselves in the foot, so I do not completely rule out one last Republican gasp prior to 2020.)

We are still free to express ourselves, short of fomenting a riot or a lynch mob. Well mostly. There is some poor suffering bastard of a soldier who is being tortured by the government for leaking some confidential data. As long as a person has not surrendered his rights, as soldiers do (in effect) there is a very little constraint on one's expressing himself.

So two cheers for the First Amendment. It is still honored by the courts and it is not quite dead yet.

By the way the Constitution was nearly smothered very early in its life. John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition acts into law and that was a strong assault on the right of free speech. Fortunately that terrible laws was repealed during Jefferson's administration.

ruveyn

I don't understand this whole soldiers give up their rights thing, are they suddenly not citizens deserving of their rights?

Perhaps about the same time that the left admits that they're not actually that fond of civil liberties.

In the military one takes orders. This means one's rights to free expression are curtailed.

Can you spell mutiny?

ruveyn

Not exactly. The Democrats are so moon-bat (taken over by Marxists and Socialists) that you won't see the Tea Party aligning with their ideas. Hence, the "republican revolution" of 2010 is not the Tea Party siding with the Republicans...it's a simple fact that the vast majority of America embraces conservative/moderate values and the Democrats are so far out of touch with this reality.



Again, poor reasoning. America is bankrupt. We are on the verge of an economic implosion. Most any Democratic/liberal priority you could think of citing are NOT constitutionally-mandated programs, and we're talking about deep and severe cuts to anything not absolutely necessary.

Not the best analogy, but you're looking at a bankrupt household and saying that only cutting 10% from the monthly food budget but cutting out 100% of the monthly movie budget is being "right-wing." No. Some spending simply is more necessary than others, and America has implemented a ton of programs...most achieve nothing compared to how much money it consumes, and fixing the mess will involve gutting everything we don't absolutely need.



Well, first, Keynesian theory is a good part of why we are in the mess we are in. Second, GOVERNMENT cannot spend what it does not have. If you want to put $1,000,000 in to high speed rail (a failed concept before you spend the first dime), the government must take that from the pockets of an already suffering people (either directly or borrowing which results in taxation to repay the debt).

Investing in education is a failure. We spend double of what we have spent in the past and are getting worse results. There are severe problems in American education that MUST BE FIXED before more spending is justified. Frankly, government intervention is a huge reason why US education is so messed up, but I won't go into that here.

Investing in infrastructure is a mixed bag. One big project that moved America forward was the construction of the US Interstate Highway system, but consider this....(1) that project was funded on debt...starting the mess we are in now. We just never reaped what was sown because we could borrow so much more before it became a crisis; (2) for all the money invested in the construction, nowhere near enough was allocated each year thereafter to maintain the infrastructure. The highway system is having problems...dams and bridges are in danger of collapsing due to non-maintenance, but the money to fix them is not there. All because of poor budgeting for the last 40 years.

Government can facilitate some projects to bring economic growth, but without competent government, you wind up with mismanagement and waste with no benefit being realized by the general public while a handful of special interests make a nice profit on the government spending project.