Americas system of checks and balances has collapsed and cant be fixed heres who to blame

[applegrove]

America’s system of checks and balances has collapsed and can’t be fixed — here’s who to blame

by Neal Gabler, Moyers and Co., Raw Story

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/americas-system-of-checks-and-balances-has-collapsed-and-cant-be-fixed-heres-who-to-blame/

SNIP.............


Madison, then, didn’t foresee that a major party could be hijacked by extremists, as the Republicans have been, or that those extremists would then expunge from the party the very diverse elements that Madison had identified as our democratic safeguard. Or to put it another way, the Republican Party monopolized itself before it monopolized our government. Not even the farmers, small businessmen, Rotarians and Wall Street bankers who had formed the core of the pre-Reagan party saw that coming. About one thing, however, Madison was right: Extremists have no interest in democracy.

And that brings us to the Founders’ fourth and most important assumption. They assumed that those who aspired to power did so to govern; they didn’t aspire to govern to gain power. But what happens when a major party doesn’t believe in government itself? Republicans profess to love the Constitution. They carry copies in their shirt pockets and wave them at every opportunity. But here is the quandary: The Constitution creates the government, and Republicans profess to hate government every bit as much as they love the Constitution. Indeed, the modern GOP not only arose from the forces of extremism — the Manionites, John Birchers and Apocalyptics. It arose from those who vowed to destroy government as we know it — or, as one recent anti-government Republican, Steve Bannon, promised, “to deconstruct the administrative state.”

.............

So kissing the Constitution is really a neat trick to disguise how little the Constitution really matters now, how pro forma it has become, how its assumptions have been savaged. A government that was predicated on goodwill has few practitioners of it and virtually none among the current governing party. A government in which power was subject to checks and balances has virtually none, only party uniformity. A government in which, in the words of one constitutional scholar, it was “almost impossible for a zealous movement to sweep like wildfire . . . and seize control,” has been seized by such a movement. And a government that was designed to provide stability, temperance, deliberation and wisdom is controlled by a party that doesn’t even believe in government, much less those virtues.

Yes, as I said, others will occupy the White House and Congress and even the Supreme Court. But there is nothing they can do to rebuild the structure the Republicans razed when they tore down the Constitution. What is left is the rubble.

.............SNIP

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Yep, it is over. it will be entirely over when Koch bros convene constitutional convention

in 2018 when progressives insist on pure candidates and state and national elections are won by even more republicans.

[brooklynite]

3. But what are your balances like?

[NightWatcher]

4. Who uses checks anymore Mr Spam?

[dogknob]

5. K&R n/t