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Republican Party Blocks Constitutionalist Majorities and Liberty
The swing vote of the Senate Republicans and the swing vote of the Senate Democrats have Liberty Scores that are identical, which makes the governance of Republicans and Democrats identical.
James Anthony
October 2, 2020
The Republican Party leadership’s choice to not have a platform has raised questions of what the party is and what it stands for. These questions can be answered simply and quantitatively.
Republican Party Is Progressives’ Lynchpin
The Republican Party is a system for getting elected the most-Progressive non-Democrats that crony money can buy.
Since it’s a system for getting people elected, it offers ballot access. A minority of elected Republicans use this ballot access to get elected but are constitutionalists.
Constitutionalists are defined by their actions: constitutionalists use their constitutional offsetting powers [1] to limit others in government, limiting government. Limiting government maximizes liberty.
I count these people as constitutionalists:
The Republicans in this informal constitutionalist caucus are the only good part of the Republican Party.
Trump, of course, despite his less-bad-than-usual foreign policy, is not a constitutionalist, not even close. Even so, it’s important to pitch constitutionalist actions and policy ideas to Trump. He listens. Sometimes he even acts, given enough apparent support to overpower the strong preferences of his even-more-Progressive family and staff.
The Republicans who aren’t in this constitutionalist caucus are the Progressives who are the most damaging of all, bar none. Because these are the Progressives who block voters from being able to vote into office constitutionalist legislative majorities and executives, both state and national.
Republican Party Stands for Progressivism
To really understand the position that this Progressive blocking leaves voters in, it’s critical to examine what we voters actually get when we, together, elect a Republican majority or a Democratic majority.
What defines what voters actually get from a party are the preferences of the single elected representative in the party whose vote is on the margin: the swing vote; the person who has to be persuaded to vote for a bill before the bill can pass.
The Senate is the more Progressive, and therefore the less constitutionalist, of the two houses of Congress. Also, constitutionally the Senate should have simple-majority voting [3]. So, constitutionally we should focus on the senator in each party who has the Liberty Score that’s the 50th-most-distant from the Liberty Scores of the other party members.
What Republican voters get from the Republican Party system is very much the opposite of what the majority of Republican voters want when they vote:
That’s right: examined quantitatively, the policy results that voters get from the two Progressive-controlled major parties are identical. No difference at all.
As long as the controlling Republicans in the elected branches of the state governments or of the national government are that bad:
Life will never be made secure from abortion by Republican executive officers in any states or in the nation.
Government spending will always bleed off the value that we the people add in our work.
Obamacare and all the other healthcare cronyism, both in states and in the nation, will never be repealed.
The national courts will never have their jurisdictions reduced by Republican congresspeople, and another non-judicial-supremacist constitutionalist like Clarence Thomas will never be proposed by Republican presidents or confirmed by Republican senators.
A Good Party Would Have No Platform
A good party would require an incumbent candidate to have a Liberty Score of at least 80%.
A good party would also have no platform. A good party’s voters would have no choice but to focus on understanding what the party’s individual candidates would do. Platforms distract voters into paying less attention to the only thing that voters actually control—their votes.
I say always vote for the most-constitutionalist candidate in every race, and let the chips fall as they may.
Votes for Progressives, and votes for less-than-constitutionalists, stick us with change for the worse, increasing government coercion.
Votes for constitutionalists are the best-possible steps towards fast change, which increases liberty:
Always, votes for constitutionalists are votes for fast change. And fast change is the way to liberty.
References
Anthony, James. “Boundaries: Offsetting Powers.” rConstitution.us, rconstitution.us/boundaries/#off-bound. Accessed 2 Oct. 2020.
Conservative Review. “Scorecard – Select Your State.” Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 9 Sep. 2020, web.archive.org/web/20200909074012/https:/www.conservativereview.com/scorecard/. Accessed 2 Oct. 2020.
Coenen, Dan T. “The Filibuster and the Framing: Why the Cloture Rule is Unconstitutional and What to Do About It.” Boston College Law Review, vol. 55, no. 1, 2014, pp. 39-92.
Havrylyshyn, Oleh, et al. 25 Years of Reforms in Ex-Communist Countries: Fast and Extensive Reforms Led to Higher Growth and More Political Freedom. Policy Analysis no. 795, Cato Institute, 12 July 2016.
James Anthony is the author of The Constitution Needs a Good Party and rConstitution Papers. Mr. Anthony is a chemical engineer with a master’s in mechanical engineering.
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