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On Tim Pawlenty’s Freedom First PAC homepage you’ll find first a banner congratulating Scott Brown on his momentous win last night. It then fades into a second banner that encourages you to sign a petition for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. T-Paw and every other 2012 and 2010 candidate will try to get in front of the Scott Brown parade, but it seems that Pawlenty may have missed what the parade is about.
Brown won because he was able to touch upon independent and Republican distaste for Obama’s healthcare reform, and show that Democrats were already out of touch with the national mood on issues like stimulus spending and bailouts. But Pawlenty’s response to Brown’s victory is something like this: “Great job Brown you proved that America doesn’t want an expansive and meddlesome central government… now let’s change the Constitution!”
Wait, what? If Brown is capitalizing on America’s, even deep blue state America’s, distrust of government playing too heavy a hand, what logic connects that success with amending the Constitution for a balanced budget– which would send shockwaves through the economy and potentially relegate the toughest budgeting decisions to the Supreme Court. America needs reform, the GOP must champion it, but it can’t look like this. If Pawlenty wants to jump in front of the parade, it might pay to first think about how it got moving.
sinz54 // Jan 21, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Advocating amending the Constitution is just a way of punting the hard decisions of just how to balance the Federal budget (or even whether it should be balanced during a recession).
To pass an Amendment, you need 2/3 of both houses of Congress AND 3/4 of the state legislatures. Good luck with that.
Since the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1789, the Constitution has been amended only 17 more times–an average of one Amendment every 13 years.
If you truly want to balance the Federal budget, you don’t need to wait for all that. You just need to tell us which outlays to cut and which taxes to raise.
You’re right, Pawlenty has misread the mood of the public. They don’t want to be bamboozled anymore. And they will know that advocating a Constitutional Amendment in lieu of real proposals is just bamboozling them some more.
TAZ // Jan 21, 2010 at 12:54 pm
While he is amending the constitution for the balanced budget amendment maybe he can make some promises on an amendment for abortion too….
As I said in another post, my local Mississippi radio talking heads (social tea partiers) are claiming a victory because “conservatism” was put back in “republicanism”……
Never mind he’s pro-abortion and open to gay marriage…….