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By Shelli Dawdy

In two recent articles, I laid out what I believe to be some unfortunate truths. In Don’t Count On A Republican Congress To Save The Day I theorized there is ample evidence and information that placing all hopes on the results of November’s election is a fallacy.

The title of the second, GOP Congress Will Not Save Us: Time To Choose OURSELVES,  was very deliberate both in repeating the mantra about Congress and in echoing the title of a 1964 speech by Ronald Reagan. Shortly before that year’s Presidential Election, Reagan informed America it was time to choose. He urged Americans to preserve freedom by rejecting the establishment of the day. He believed the members of the establishment embraced collectivism both at home with welfare state policies and abroad through the advocacy for “accommodation” of Communist nations. Reagan warned that failure to reject those forces would ultimately result in Nikita Kruschev’s prediction coming true. The Soviet dictator said America would someday freely choose Communism. Reagan believed it would come after a period that degraded the spiritual, moral, and economic fiber of the nation.

Ronald Reagan was correct. After decades of weakening from within, the wheel has turned – the paradigm has shifted. The forces which were oceans away in 1964 have embedded themselves in government and other structures of power. The appeaser crowd, then largely relegated to the Democratic Party and higher academia are now running the Republican Party.

If you remain a skeptic I urge you not only to read both of the above articles in full (they include a number of references), but in addition urge also that you read or watch “A Time for Choosing” and read the article “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution” by Andrew M. Codevilla.

If you followed a link to this article, you are likely searching for answers. You are wondering what can be done to reverse the course of government and if you have stuck with what I’ve had to say so far, you must at least have some degree of skepticism regarding a Republican majority in Congress. That nagging feeling you’ve likely been having is to be encouraged.

Since the February 19, 2009 rant of Rick Santelli that sparked the “tea party movement”, an incredible amount of time, effort, and money has been poured into an overall effort to resist the implementation of an agenda that will fulfill the promises to “transform America“. Besides knowing you are not alone in your general state of concern, what has been the result?

Most of the efforts have have been focused on the national scene. It seems we all know what Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are doing every minute of the day. In National Enquirer tabloid style 24/7 journalism, all focus moves to the next national target on which all will fix their attention for days or even weeks. Beefcake Senate candidate Scott Brown is the next Messiah…some addled Congressman fears Guam will capsize…we discover Pelosi doesn’t walk softly but she does carry a very big stick…and photo comparisons reveal that President Obama is going gray.

We learn about the million and one outrages of D.C.’s Ruling Class. But it’s worse than National Enquirer, this seems like opiate for the political junkies. While taking our “daily hit” we are led to the campaign trail that ends with the November elections. So most of the attention and efforts are focused like laser beams on that supposedly all-important day. With the exception of covering Harry Reid’s Senate race, hit and miss of Crist vs. Rubio, and primary night announcements, most states’ primaries received little attention and are now over. In most states where Republican incumbents even had challengers, the incumbents have been winning by wide margins. It’s the same old story – all the incumbents are bad except “my incumbents”. If people are not willing to show up at the polls in the first place (typical voter turnout at primaries has been around 20% of registered voters) AND if those who do actually bother to vote are not willing to throw out the establishment ruling class RINOs, little will change in Congress.

And that is why my original premise, only now more firmly stated: It is nothing more than the definition of insanity to expect miracles from the November elections. We’ve tried this Republican majority thing before under very similar circumstances with similar kinds of candidates. HOW do we expect we will get different results this time?

While I detest the idea, I will now invoke what I consider to be the nuclear option – I invoke the mantra of Susan Powter…(sorry, desperate times call for desperate measures)

STOP THE INSANITY!

The gulf coast oil spill was and is a horrible disaster with consequences that will last for years to come. But when one looks at the “big picture”, the oil spill is dwarfed by the tsunami of red ink that promises to suck everyone into its wake.

We can either let the creatures of the Ruling Class drown us in it, or we can get in the life boats well within our reach and get off the ship. As I noted in my last article, the answers are simple but not easy.

Really it boils down to one simple solution – living the Constitution as originally intended. That means restoring the rightful relationship between the federal government and the several states. When we examine why everything is upside down, we discover what is most upside down in government is that the relationship is completely backwards from that which was intended. We should not forget – it was the states that decided to create a federal government, it was the states who enumerated the federal government’s powers.

The life boat we all need to get it in is right within our own states – located at our State Capitols. It’s simple. It’s clear that those creatures from that eastern swamp are not listening and there is little we can do outside of sending back the same crop of Republicans, increased in number.

The reason why this solution is not easy is because when it is so much as hinted at, it is dismissed, even by supposed “conservatives” or those that talk about the Constitution. Fox News’ Megan Kelly, for instance, in a discussion about Missouri’s Prop C, presented as a given that we simply “could not have” individual states deciding which federal laws they would follow. Every time, in fact, the result of the Missouri election on this measure was discussed in the several days following, “conservative” anchors and talking heads on FNC discussed the “symbolic” action of voters and it’s only real impact…on opinion polls.

The lie that has become institutionalized is that the Federal government has the power to dictate to the states. It has become unthinkable that any state would refuse to comply with a federal law. No one seems to consider anymore that states have a place at the table when it comes to discussing whether or not a law passed by Congress or an executive order issued by the President or a decree by a federal bureaucrat is constitutional. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. That does not mean that laws passed by the federal government which are unconstitutional are the supreme law of the land.

As Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia wrote in the decision Printz vs The United States (1997):

The Supremacy Clause, however, makes “Law of the Land” only “Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance [of the Constitution]“; so the Supremacy Clause merely brings us back to the question discussed earlier, whether laws conscripting state officers violate state sovereignty and are thus not in accord with the Constitution.

Although we had no occasion to pass upon the subject in Brown [Editor’s note: another case cited], later opinions of ours have made clear that the Federal Government may not compel the States to implement, by legislation or executive action, federal regulatory programs.

In the Printz decision, Justice Scalia also referred to a similar case in 1992, noting:

“The Federal Government,” we held, “may not compel the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.”

In future articles, I intend to address in more detail the idea that the answer to turning the direction of the country lies within our own states. For now it is worth pondering another of Justice Scalia’s statements in Printz:

Federal commandeering of state governments is such a novel phenomenon that this Court’s first experience with it did not occur until the 1970′s…

For now, I will conclude with the following question:

If it is accepted that federal commandeering of state governments is “novel”, that the federal government cannot compel states to enact a federal regulatory program, then why is there so much federal money flowing into states and so many federal mandates dictating state and local action?

[originally published on: Aug 17, 2010 @ 7:35]