We Did it in Louisiana (Of All Places)
By Rense Johnson, Chairman, Citizens for Term Limits
Yes, we did. They told us In Baton Rouge that it could not be done. Yet a group of amateurs persuaded the Louisiana Legislature to amend the state’s constitution to limit legislators’ terms. The bill passed with 90% of the Louisiana House of Representatives, 80% of the Senate. It was then ratified overwhelmingly by the electorate. Even today, Louisiana is the only state to limit legislators’ terms by constitutional amendment. It is the first break for the Louisiana man on the street since before Huey Long. Yes — Louisiana.
- Louisianians are way ahead of their Washington government on the term limitation issue, which is of supreme importance to every American.
- So are residents of every other state, as they too watch in dismay while our career-minded Congress continues to deteriorate.
- Upwards of 75% of American voters favor congressional term limitation. It is the issue which unites Americans above all others.
- Today’s working stiffs, the men or women struggling to get ahead in today’s America, know that no one in Congress represents them. They see that there is a huge divide between them and their Washington government, and that Members of Congress are interested only in their own careers.
- Living off the credit card of our unborn progeny, our Congress has run up an acknowledged national debt of seven and a quarter trillion dollars, as it becomes ever more removed from reality.
- Meanwhile, Members of Congress accept billions of dollars in cash and favors from lobbyists. (PoliticalMoneyLine: www.tray.com)
- Congress has legalized its own bribery.
In 1994, Republicans flirted with a platform based on what America wants for its government. Sadly, congressional Republicans couldn’t stand the huge success of their own strategy.
So they took constitutional term limitation, centerpiece of their Contract with America — and threw it overboard. They broke ranks with their own voting constituents to protect their own careers. It became congressional careers versus American Voters.
- It was as if Jackie Joyner Kersey had stopped ten yards from the finish line and started running in the opposite direction.
- Or as if General Eisenhower, having secured the Normandy beachhead, had ordered his troops back into the boats to return to England.
- The result? After their 1994 tour de force, Republicans started losing ground, losing voters in 1996, losing voters again in 1998 and again in 2000. No wonder the 2000 presidential election was so close! Indisputable cause and effect.
The once Grand Old Party has been replaced by opportunists willing to stand by and watch the Republican ship founder on the rocks and shoals of party defeat, — so long as they have the self-serving refuge of their own careerist lifeboats. These are the attitudes of career politicians.
The Democrat party is no better — only more candid in its opposition to term limitation. Careerism, which might have become a Republican issue but for that party’s failure of leadership, has become a nonpartisan issue. The parties bear equal guilt for destruction of the fiber of our country.
- Congressional leadership in each party works to be sure that term limitation loses. This is the real third rail of American politics.
- And every time term limitation loses, the country loses.
- Six-year limits in House and in Senate are plenty. Why should Members of Congress stay longer than the President of the United States?
- The real American majority today lies with the term limitation issue, seventy-five percent strong. The political party that first wakes up to that fact will capture not just a few House or Senate seats one way or another, but a congressional landslide, sweeping its presidential team into office with it.
No nation can ever be greater than the combined character, integrity and virtue of its leaders.
