For Republicans, defending the Constitution is like the weather: They all talk about it, but nobody ever does anything. Or, at least, does anything practical.
Conservatives think that modern government has drifted far from the constitutional design, to the country’s detriment. Too often, though, the remedies they offer are either fanciful or plainly inadequate. In the former category are proposals for constitutional amendments to provide more structural protection for constitutional principles that have fallen by the wayside: supermajority requirements for tax increases, for example, as a means of restoring limits on the federal government. Whatever the merits of these ideas, the very high bar the Constitution erects for formal amendment limits their utility. In the latter category are pledges to appoint only originalist judges. That goal is certainly an important one, but it sometimes causes conservatives to neglect the duties of the other branches of the government, and of citizens, in preserving the constitutional order.
Comments