The Founding Fathers never anticipated a rogue president and a compliant/complicit congress

[Stinky The Clown]

We're getting pretty fucking close to Recep Erdoğan territory here.

[RKP5637]

1. With zero balance of power. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

2. I believe they did anticipate and that's one of the reasons

they ratified the Bill of Rights.


Thanks for the thread Stinky The Clown

[lark]

3. I agree, they couldn't fathom a criminal traitor using other countries to steal our elections.

I think what drumpf wants is to be Putin and make America into his Russia with the oligarchs ruling & running everything and the people desperate and starving and dying young. He thinks PUtin is so manly and so wants to be him in every way but is too stupid to realize this requires discipline and study, something he will do or have.

[unblock]

5. actually, they feared this very much.

they were particularly concerned about interference from england and france.

hence, the emoluments clause.

impeachment was in part meant as a check against this as well; as was the idea of using human electors in the electoral college, who were not presumed to be so rabidly loyal or even legally bound not to change their vote.

[jberryhill]

9. Well, it's not as if the electors were beholden to actual voters anyway

The mechanics of presidential election in the original Constitution is something of a clubby affair in the first place.

[Kirk Lover]

4. I believe they envisioned a rogue leader, however they fucked up not accounting for a

complicit, covering up CONGRESS.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. That's the nut, right there. A complicit, compliant, cowering Congress

[ProudLib72]

12. I believe it was Madison

who said he didn't believe more than one or two members of congress could be complicit. Therefore, impeachment should be up to congress instead of SCOTUS.

[Cha]

6. Yeah, how could they have

anticipated fuxfuckingnoise and brainwashed Americans all those centuries ago?

[jberryhill]

8. Depends on what you mean

Each of the branches has its own mechanism for constituting itself and the simplest power dynamic is that any two can end run the other one, to a certain extent. Voters are responsible for populating these offices, although they did not envision the direct election of Senators either, so there's that.

If you are meaning to suggest that the "Founding Fathers" (and boy do I hate that phrase) didn't generally anticipate a system that worked to protect the interests of wealthy tax-averse white men, then I believe you may need to re-calibrate what you understand about the "Founding Fathers" and the idealized mythic version of them.

They certainly had disagreements on a lot of things, and compromised where they could, but as a group they envisioned a system that worked well to preserve privileges, and I would imagine that very few of them thought that this "rights" thing would get completely out of hand.

[Mr. Ected]

10. The Founding Fathers were never forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh for 3 hours a day either

How in the world could they even fathom TELEVISION, mesmerizing millions upon millions of FOX viewers with lies and propaganda, thereby corrupting the voting public, thereby corrupting Congress, which is the people's sole check on the powers of the executive branch?

This shit would have freaked out Thomas Jefferson.

[JI7]

11. And a media that treats it as normal