Punish Joe Lieberman?

stockingfull wrote:It's one thing not to agree with your caucus; it's another to campaign against them.

You right about that. It takes character and courage to do so.

coalkirk wrote:

stockingfull wrote:It's one thing not to agree with your caucus; it's another to campaign against them.

You right about that. It takes character and courage to do so.

Oh yeah, and a willingness to penalize your own constituents for your "courage."

Let's see if he gets re-elected then we'll know if they felt penalized. I doubt it.

stockingfull wrote:And, if everybody voted against everything that didn't benefit their constituents directly (military installations are an excellent example) nothing ever would get done, because there would never be enough people whose constituents all benefited from a piece of legislation to pass it.

That's not what I said, the key word here is merit. For example if we're voting on closing a base the simple question is should it be closed? If yes then close the damn thing. Instead of basing decisions on what is going to benefit your district lets base them on what benefits the nation. Right now we have endless loop of poor legislation and the cycle has to stop.

A noble idea, just not a very practical one.

This isn't something new, to the contrary. Just as the turkey dinner doesn't magically appear on the Thanksgiving tables in Wasilla, so also is legislation not unlike the making of sausage. It involves compromises which many purists find distasteful.

But the alternative is gridlock.

There's a great story about FDR trying to get a big secret installation built to get the nuke effort going. Senator McKellar of TN heads appropriations and tells the President, "Yes, it can be done, and Mr. President, just where in Tennessee are we going to locate that thing?"

http://www.smithdray1.net/angeltowns/or/sch.htm

As Bismarck noted in 1867, "Politics is the art of the possible." That involves synthesizing the needs and desires of many and, at their best, that's what parties do.