Foolish Misunderstanding

CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria is dismayed with our Constitution and the concept of a republican democracy.

[T]he Constitutional concept of equal representation in the U.S. Senate [is] a “structural problem.”

And

…”new dividing line in Western politics,” which [Zakaria] describes is the “less-educated rural populations” he calls “Outsiders” who “feel ignored or looked down upon” and “feel deep resentment towards metropolitan elites.”

And

…30% of America is now electing 70% of the Senate.  All those states with—you think of Wyoming. It has roughly a million people. It has two senators. California with 70 million people has two senators as well. So we have a kind of structural problem here where the land is being overrepresented. The people are being underrepresented. So both sides feel deeply wronged.

However.

That alleged imbalance is a designed-in feature, not a problem; it’s what makes us a republican democracy of some durability, not a popular democracy doomed to the failure of tyranny at the hands of a few—Zakaria’s metro elites, for instance.

The need to balance the large- and small-population States in one house of our Congress is just as important today as it was those 230 years ago.  For the same reason and for another: the political divide between the populous coastal States and less populous flyover country—illustrated by that very term of the Left’s and by Zakaria’s plain contempt for the less-educated (as we must be, because rural)—is even deeper than the political divide between the populous and rural States of those original thirteen.

Wyoming needs to be able to defend itself from an overweening California.

It’s sad that Zakaria slept through his 8th grade civics class.

Border Wall Funding

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is continuing to insist—brag, really—that there aren’t the votes in the House or the Senate for funding for a border wall.  Presently, he’s focused on the Senate:

Schumer maintained that Trump does not have the votes for a wall, at least in the Senate.

Schumer’s prior remarks might have been right about the House; the Republican caucus there has been as unfocused and undisciplined and dither-ridden as they’ve been for the last several years regarding border security.  Thursday, though, President Donald Trump injected some backbone into the caucus and sharpened its focus: he told Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and other Republicans present in a mid-day meeting—in no uncertain terms—that he would veto the CR that the Senate had so cravenly passed because it had no border wall money in it.  Thursday evening, the House responded, passing 217-185 (with 8 Republicans voting with the Progressive-Democrats) an amended CR with $5.7 billion in it for a border wall.  That bill has been passed to the Senate.

However, the reason President Donald Trump doesn’t have the votes in the Senate is because Schumer actively, proudly, blocks such a thing, even as he claims the Republicans control the Senate—as though in his fantasy world 60 is less than 51 (or next year, 53).  Of course, Schumer knows better, he’s just proud of his obstructionism.  He’s also proud of his hypocrisy, having supported several more billions of dollars than just five for a border wall—the 2006 Secure Fence Act, for instance—and as recently as last January, after which he welched on an agreement that involved solutions for 1.8 million DACA people (more than the 800 thousand for whom Progressive-Democrats had been seeking help) along with a parallel $25 billion for the wall.

Prepare to greet the Schumer Shutdown redux.