Democracy’s Epic Fail: The Electoral College Should Be Brought Back
todayAugust 11, 2015
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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – The way it would work and the way it was pitched in the ratifying conventions, and the way it was discussed in the drafting convention was that the founders had a great fear that if you left election or selection of the presidency in the hands of the hoi polloi, they’d wind up choosing demagogues, they’d screw it up. Check out today’s transcript for the rest….
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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript
Mike: Shirley in Tennessee is next on the Mike Church Show here on the Sirius XM Patriot Channel. Hello, Shirley. How are you doing?
Caller Shirley: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call.
Mike: Wow, you’re excited. I’m excited now, too.
Caller Shirley: That’s great. Of course, I’m a female –
Mike: Wait a minute. Madam, wait a minute. I must not allow you to identify yourself as a gender.
Caller Shirley: Well, I’m the one that they’re concerned with. I’d like to tell you that I’m not offended with Donald at all. I don’t pay him any attention. I actually think he’s funny. I did have a question for you if you could help me with this. There was a report on one of the stations that 2016 is going to be a nail biter and that the Democrats are being said to be the one to win the seat of the presidency by a
slim margin of 250 something votes. It stated that that’s going to all be because of the electoral collegiate. I wanted to know, how do you shut them down?
Mike: You don’t want to shut the – we need more Electoral College not less. You have a total of 535 votes possible, so that means that 268, I believe, is the number. It’s either 268 or 278 is the number that is needed to win the Electoral College vote. The Electoral College, of course, does not operate the way that it was intended to operate when the founders drafted the Constitution. It, too, has suffered the same perversions and distortions that have been visited upon it, that have been visited upon the rest of the Constitution.
The way it would work and the way it was pitched in the ratifying conventions, and the way it was discussed in the drafting convention was that the founders had a great fear that if you left election or selection of the presidency in the hands of the hoi polloi, they’d wind up choosing demagogues, they’d screw it up. As a matter of fact, in my movie The Spirit of ’76, in the unedited version, the long-form version, the speech that Hamilton gives – of course, Hamilton speaks for an entire day. We only show you about five minutes of it or a little less. The speech that Hamilton gives says exactly this. This is why Hamilton goes in there and says: We ought to have a monarchy. We ought to just imitate the English model. It’s the best in the world. It works the best. The French use it. The Spanish use it. The Portuguese use it. The Grimaldis use it. They’re even using it in the Netherlands now. We ought to use it.
I say it was discussed; it was proposed by Alexander Hamilton in the Federal Convention, before he was basically – this was to the shock of Livingston and Yates, Judge Yates and two of the other delegates from New York. James Madison then said: Thanks, Alex, that was really nice but we’re going to have a ginormous, powerful central government. That’s when the New York delegation left in protest. It’s interesting that they did not leave in protest when Hamilton gave his speech. Yates and company only left after Madison’s speech.
What the Electoral College is supposed to do is prevent the excesses, what Hamilton and others called excessive democracy. If you read The Federalist Papers, if you’re a fan of The Federalist Papers or a fan of the op-eds, because that’s what they basically were, editorials that ran in New York newspapers. They were not very widely read outside of New York because they were specifically aimed at moving the then-reticent New York ratifying convention into ratifying. Governor Clinton at the time didn’t want to ratify either. That’s funny because the man ultimately becomes vice president.
The college was supposed to be selected by the same type of body, legislatures and assemblies that would elect members of the Senate. The electors weren’t bound to a popular vote. It wasn’t until after the plan got implemented that the people said: Wait a minute, we want to vote! Of course, “we” was a very small percentage at that time. The “we” were males, mostly property owners. Understand that the Electoral College was put in there as a precaution. It was not put in there is an act of tyranny. It was put in there as the opposite.
Today we have this infatuation with, [mocking] “Every man has a vote.” No, stupid men shouldn’t vote and neither should stupid women. Unintelligent men shouldn’t vote and neither should unintelligent women. Unintelligent others shouldn’t vote. Well, I said others. I’ve covered all the genders, haven’t I? [mocking] “If a candidate wins all the votes in our state, we want all of our electoral college votes to be awarded.” That’s one of the latest lurches towards mass democracy. You’re not going to like living under mass democracy. It’s never worked it’s not going to work here. Remember, there are those that want to give it the old college try.
Let’s go to the Dude Maker Hotline and say hi to our colleague and friend, David Webb, the host of the David Webb Show here on the Sirius XM Patriot Channel, 9 p.m. Eastern every weekday night. I can’t believe that we actually got David Webb up and at ‘em at 7:30 a.m. Eastern. I’m flattered. That’s got to be a first. [/private]
David Webb: The first thing I want to say, Mike, do me a favor. Grab that last piece on the electoral college and make that thing viral so people actually understand the difference between mass democracy, the dangers of guys like FDR who wanted to do this and other progressives, versus a representative republic and a structure that gives you better representation, not basically mob rule.
Mike: Mob rules seems to be the direction we’re headed if not already by and large there, my friend.
Webb: There are people that would like it. I’ve interviewed some of these people, whether they call themselves socialists, Party for Socialism and Liberation, progressives, whatever. Even on the other side there are plenty of those that believe in this kind of mass stupidity which we’ve seen play out in other countries like Greece where people vote their interests at the expense of their very own selves because eventually you run out of the ability to support your stupidity.
Mike: It’s funny that they vote their interests. Their interests, as you just pointed out, they’re not very well disciplined in what their interests ought to be.
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