Ayotte Looking to Amend 14th Amendment? Or, How Embarrassing is This

Update (4.00 / 5)

The Washington Monthly has a pretty good post about Ayotte's plunge into Palin-dom.

Those who hoped Ayotte could be a mainstream voice for the GOP have every reason to be disappointed in what's become of her campaign. She's quickly proving herself to be just another Republican, too afraid of extremists to do the right thing.

And in the larger context, as the desire among key GOP figures to tinker with the 14th Amendment grows, it's hard to overstate how disheartening it is to see what's become of the modern Republican Party.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.c...  



"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    

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by: Kathy Sullivan 2 @ Mon Aug 09, 2010 at 21:33:42 PM UTC

In part, I blame the capture of the political process (0.00 / 0)

by consultants and political operatives who make a career out of "grooming" candidates for public office.  The instinct-driven person makes an ideal candidate for them because s/he's primed to take direction -- i.e. to do what the "professionals" advise.  The Republican party has been particularly intent on getting such people to run for office because, once they are in, they continue to be subservient to the "leadership."

The instinct-driven don't think and the political leadership (power structure) doesn't want followers that think.  

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by: hannah @ Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 10:19:10 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

here's a woman (0.00 / 0)

who is in favor of forced childbirth for white women, but sees brown women as "having babies just to get health care."

I bet she calls herself a Christian, too.  

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by: susanthe @ Mon Aug 09, 2010 at 22:25:43 PM UTC

At the Cheshire Fair yesterday.... (4.00 / 7)

...I engaged a man staffing a self-styled Constitutionalist booth.  I was intrigued because while he had all sorts of quasi-religious banners proclaiming devotion to the Declaration of Independence, he also had a petition and other paraphernalia calling for an end to illegal immigration.  I couldnt help but try to reason with the poor soul, and point out that one of the charges against King George was that he was frustrating immigration to the Colonies.

In the end, in his exasperation with my way-too-liberal approach to humanity, he finally blurted out,

"Do you want them to overrun us?!?!"

And therein lies the kernel of truth at the bottom of the immigration wars.  Blacks, you see, are no longer problematic, because they are a shrinking segment of the population.  But those brown, Spanish-speaking south-o-the-border types....why, they're just having oodles of babies (and getting housing, cars, and a college education free!  Did you know that?  I sure didn't!)...and outbredding us Anglo Folks.  And the only way to stop them without upsetting the Pro-Life contingency is to simply make them illegal at the moment of conception.

Because Prohibition worked SO WELL the first time.....

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by: Tully Fitzsimmons @ Mon Aug 09, 2010 at 22:38:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

that's the ugly bottom line (4.00 / 6)

the Republicans have nothing to offer in the way of solutions, so to gin up the faithful, they've decided to use racism/xenophobia.  

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by: susanthe @ Mon Aug 09, 2010 at 22:44:50 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

big surprise (4.00 / 1)

greed and fear
greed and fear
greed and fear
greed and fear
greed and fear
greed and fear

etc
add hate and stir

note to close readers: this might be sarcastic so think twice before reading to candidates for use in their attacks on each other

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by: JonnyBBad @ Mon Aug 09, 2010 at 22:56:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

And that's the Republican strategy in a nutshell (4.00 / 1)

Define 'us' as 'religious white people' and convince Republicans that 'us' means 'Americans.'

Then exalt 'us' and declare a threat from everyone else, the collective 'them,' to rally and rouse the idiots, who've successfully been conditioned to not recognize their own racism anymore because it's not 'black' and 'white' just 'us' and 'them.'

Only the left protects anyone's rights.

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by: RealNRH @ Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 00:07:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

In the wildly unlikely scenario that an amendment repealing the 14th is proposed by Congress, (4.00 / 5)

It would take the legislatures of 38 states to ratify it.

So let's make sure we win our legislative and Congressional elections.

--
Hope > Anarch-tea
Twitter: @DougLindner

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by: Douglas E. Lindner @ Mon Aug 09, 2010 at 23:13:13 PM UTC

It's hard to reconcile (0.00 / 0)

the admonitions from the right about protecting the Constitution with their simultaneous desire to change the Constitution - the Fourteenth Amendment and a balanced budget amendment.  And, of course, there's the dissonance created by screaming about civil liberties and small government while trying to use government to take away civil liberties and discriminate against people.

It's quite possible that they simply don't know what they're doing.  

In the immediate aftermath of Since the start of the financial crisis, the Fed/Treasury lent, spent, or guaranteed $28 $29 trillion to save the banking system.

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by: StraffordDem @ Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 01:38:00 AM UTC

Right. They are irrational. They are lacking in self-awareness and, (4.00 / 1)

as a consequence, find it almost impossible to make accurate assessments of other people or situations.  This, I think, is the origin of their insecurity and fear.
I used to think fear was being intentionally generated.  Now I'm more inclined to think that fear is something these politicians and their supporters have in common.  Their main issue has always been "national security," a large tent that's easier to talk about than the security blanket one was forced to give up as a child.  And I do think the insecurity starts in childhood.  

When people are insecure, they are often obnoxious in an effort to hide it -- or overly friendly.

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by: hannah @ Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 10:11:25 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

In a way (0.00 / 0)

it reminds me of having a discussion with an emotionally wrought person.  Their judgment is clouded by their fear, and the desire for security (whether national or personal) in a volatile and rapidly changing world trumps anything rational.

Change is hard for me, too.  I sometimes hold my breath and take that big step (sometimes a leap) forward.  I do this because, as Thomas Wolfe famously put it, You Can't Go Home Again.  

There is no substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.

In the immediate aftermath of Since the start of the financial crisis, the Fed/Treasury lent, spent, or guaranteed $28 $29 trillion to save the banking system.

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by: StraffordDem @ Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 13:27:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Some people really prefer to just sit. (0.00 / 0)

I have a grandson like that.  He just sits, if someone's not telling him what to do.  He's lacking in self-direction.  His habitual behavior is simply external direction having become automatic.  That it's not purposeful is evidenced by the fact that any distraction is likely to derail the behavior and then the default is to just sit.  The response to confusion is to do nothing.  Literally.

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by: hannah @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 22:05:59 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Some people really prefer to just sit. (0.00 / 0)

I have a grandson like that.  He just sits, if someone's not telling him what to do.  He's lacking in self-direction.  His habitual behavior is simply external direction having become automatic.  That it's not purposeful is evidenced by the fact that any distraction is likely to derail the behavior and then the default is to just sit.  The response to confusion is to do nothing.  Literally.

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by: hannah @ Wed Aug 11, 2010 at 22:05:59 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Why Does Kelly Ayotte Hate the Constitution? (4.00 / 1)

Reposted from my now largely-redundant diary as a humble appendix to Kathy's more detailed and thought-out post.

One of the most amusing/appalling things about this year's Senate race has been the contortions and peregrinations of Kelly Ayotte. She's a deeply reactionary right-wing Republican who looks like a RINO. She's a pro-life zealot who is sponsored by Judd Gregg, a guy who couldn't care less about social issues. In short, she's a teabagger at heart who has been forced to look sane throughout her entire career, a perceived sanity that has made her suspect in the eye's of the true lunatic fringe (aka GOP primary voters.) Now to bolster her crackpot credentials, she joins the Palinite ranks of "Constitutional commonsense conservative"candidates who love the Constitution so much, they think it needs to be radically changed.  

So I ought not have been surprised by this   but I was in spite of myself. At a town meeting in Nashua, Ms. Ayotte observed that we should we should changing the Constitution (!) in order to keep foreigners out.

"Woman: Is there ever going to be a chance of rewriting that 14th amendment or rewording it so that they have to be legal citizens?
Ayotte: Well, I know that there's a number of proposals that are being brought forward right now to look at that issue. And I think that we should." -from Huffingtonpost.

One wonders what his law school classmates think of this nonsense. And she has the nerve to describe Elena Kagan as unqualified? Sad. But predictable.

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by: measurestaken @ Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 14:07:38 PM UTC