The U.S Constitution: Read it, heed it or put it in the shredder?
Pssst! Did you miss it? Sunday was Constitution Day. There are 11 federal holidays, but Constitution Day isn’t among them. That may be but one of several signs that the U.S. Constitution isn’t getting the respect it deserves.
In fact, in an important new book, a major American political leader says he believes that “A very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”
Who said that? Was it progressives echoing their fellow Democrats’ complaint that the U.S. Constitution is outdated because it was created 236 years ago by an elite group of white men, some of whom were quite wealthy thanks to the toil of slaves?
No, not in this instance, but the Constitution has been caught in ideological crossfire from the right and the left ever since it was signed in Philadelphia on Sept. 17, 1787, so hearing such a statement in reference to the Democrats would not be a total surprise.
Indeed, for decades in the 20th century, generations of liberal college professors and their students were under the spell of an influential 1913 book, Charles Beard’s
“An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States.” That book’s basic thesis could be summed up as “money is the root of all politics, including the politics involved in the creation of the U.S. Constitution.”
However, the quote saying that “a very large portion of my party really doesn’t believe in the Constitution” was not from a Democrat. Instead, it was from Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
Romney was referring to his fellow Republicans and, particularly, to their defense of — and/or seeming lack of concern over — the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection incited by President Trump.
Romney’s candid views on this and other issues are on full display in McKay Coppins’ wellsourced new book “Romney: A Reckoning.” Coppins, a staff writer for The Atlantic, was given full access to Romney for more than two years, and it shows.
During that period Romney, the Republicans’ 2012 nominee for the White House, went from being a respected party leader to being a widely scorned party pariah, all because of his efforts to save the GOP from being abducted by members of Donald Trump’s cult.
When the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump, Romney voted to convict. In this meticulously detailed biography, Romney reveals that in private conversations with him, many of his fellow Senate Republicans shared his disdain for Trump but feared that voting against him or speaking out against him would cost them their political careers.
When Romney announced the other day that he won’t seek a second term in a Senate increasingly dominated by the elderly but would retire to make room for younger candidates, cynics credibly opined that had he run again, he would’ve suffered an embarrassing loss in deep-red Utah’s GOP primary.
In Atlantic writer Tom Nichols’ excellent review of Coppins’ book, he neatly summarizes the risk to the nation when a large portion of either political party “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”
Wrote Nichols: “If you’ve ever served in the military or as a civilian in the U.S. government, you’ve taken the oath that requires you above all — so help you God — to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,’ and to ‘bear true faith and allegiance to the same.’
“Romney is warning us that many of his Republican colleagues and much of their base will do no such thing. They would rather turn their personal misery and resentment into mindless political destruction — even to the point of shredding one of humanity’s greatest political documents.”
Even so, as concerning as that is, maybe there’s a ray of hope among some of the up-and-coming young Republicans. In fact, when Rep. Daniel Perez, R-Miami, spoke on Monday after being designated the 2024-26 Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, it was heartening to hear him cite the U.S. Constitution and what it says about the legislative branch of government.
Said Perez: “In designing this American system, the Founding Fathers believed that the legislative power should be the first branch of government. They truly believed that the great issues of the day should be debated in a deliberative body directly connected to the people.”
Those were encouraging words coming at a time when Florida’s legislative branch has mostly has been a rubber stamp for an ambitious executive branch leader who’s running for president.
Given that executive’s record with respect to — or with disrespect for — constitutions in general, including Florida’s and the U.S. Constitution, Ron DeSantis may or may not be found among the “very large portion” of his party that really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.
DeSantis also may or may not be heading to the White House instead of remaining in the Governor’s Mansion when Speaker Perez takes the gavel in November 2024.
So whether there will be a test of wills between the executive and legislative branches may not be known until the final
2024 election results are in statewide … which typically occurs when Broward County finally finishes counting votes.