Tyrants Unwittingly Launch 250th-Anniversary Revolution

Trump’s use of elderly Fox News viewers to defeat Kentucky’s 4th congressional district incumbent Thomas Massie in the Republican primary was pyrrhic. Massie emerged with an unbeatable record as a constitutionalist, significantly increased name recognition, and strengthened networked support from all younger ages.

Massie could build support for future years, but very likely could instead just win quickly right away, by right away striking out intelligently for 2028.

To win, he will need to bypass the crony-controlled major parties by running as an independent. And as he does, he will need to demonstrate to voters that his independent campaign is clearly viable. Although either of two initiatives could do this, he should do both: solve our key problem of the Republicans’ Progressivism by building a good party; and make detailed, practical plans to demolish our leviathan governments by chainsawing.

Build Constitutional Structures

The Constitution enables people to make life, liberty, and property more secure from the national government by separating powers and defining offsetting powers.

These rules securing rights and these sanctions backing these rules with force are necessary but aren’t sufficient. Analogous constitutions are needed to enable people to also make rights more secure from badly-chartered parties, state governments, county governments, city governments, neighborhood governments, legislative houses, and threatening organizations. Comprehensive rechartering is needed. The best entry point is to charter at least one good party.

An independent presidential campaign needs to secure ballot access anyway. As Massie does, he should strategically secure access not as an individual candidate but for a party. This way in future elections, candidates who will limit governments will be able to populate credible, increasingly-full slates across the board.

I’ve detailed the design features needed to make a party good in The Constitution Needs a Good Party: Good Government Comes from Good Boundaries. I’ve outlined these features in Limiting Governments by Limiting a Party.

A good party needs a meaningful name, which I recommend should be the republican Constitution Party; for short, the rConstitution Party. Adopting Randy Barnett’s nomenclature, this name will commit this party’s people to following the Constitution’s original public meaning.

A good party needs a declaration of independence from prior parties. It needs to establish the principle that offsetting powers must be used against others to limit them, and commit the party’s people to never take the actions detailed in the grievances.

A good party needs a constitution and laws that reverse every practice that has helped other parties’ people end up defying the Constitution:

• accepting candidates whose voting records aren’t pro-freedom according to the most-rigorous available scorecard
• defining platforms
• funding candidates
• sanctioning debates moderated by Progressive media
• running primaries instead of caucuses
• starting selection contests in states where the party is weaker
• allowing Super Tuesdays
• making some selection contests open
• making some selection contests winner-takes-all
• weighting delegates differently than presidential electors
• counting delegates from districts and states where the party is weak.

Voters will learn that a new party has the above detailed, practical design, and will readily recognize that this party is distinctly different, in positive, highly promising ways. Many voters will be persuaded that this party’s presidential candidate and this party’s future candidates can win.

From the start, this party’s appeal will be very strong. Over time, the number of persuaded voters will keep growing.

Plan Constitutional Actions

Unlike presidents elsewhere such as in Argentina, who have significantly-limited powers to act independently of legislatures, presidents under the Constitution start in office by taking an oath which, regardless of how slim their electoral victories might be, gives them the strongest possible mandate: to protect the Constitution.

Protecting the Constitution requires that presidents independently interpret the Constitution and only take actions that they themselves correctly interpret are constitutional. This power has always been there. We’ve just needed people to step up and use it.

A president protecting the Constitution doesn’t need expertise proposing programs and expertise managing bureaucracies in ways that change bureaucrats’ actions. Experience as an executive managing unconstitutional governments isn’t a positive good, it’s negative training that would need to be overcome.

A president protecting the Constitution today will be mostly a hatchet man:

• immediately closing unconstitutional departments, agencies, divisions, and chartered organizations
• executively allocating budgets
• commanding offensive warmaking only if congressmen declare war
• enforcing the exceedingly small set of laws on treason and counterfeiting that constitute the national government’s entire criminal-justice scope.

Here too, voters will readily recognize a presidential candidate’s commitment to chainsawing off the unconstitutional Progressive departments, agencies, divisions, and chartered organizations as distinctly different, in a positive, highly promising way. From the outset, based on this difference too, voters will see that this presidential candidate and allied candidates can win.

Progressive congressmen and justices will be existentially threatened by someone finally standing up to their Constitution defiance, and they will certainly push back hard. They may simply violate the Constitution yet another time here, by wrongly impeaching the president and attempting to remove and disqualify him from office.

If needed, the backstops will be the succeeding presidents, and ultimately voters’ support. Massie’s choice for vice president will need to be someone who will immediately preside over his senate, eliminating unconstitutional filibuster/cloture. But above all, he will need to be someone who will rapidly develop to become ready, if called to the presidency, to protect the Constitution himself every bit as strongly.

On the eve of the USA’s 250th anniversary, a founder-grade leader has emerged for our time. Create a good party, and many more leaders will step up.

The independent accountability that the Constitution demands from each official is embedded in the oath of most officials to support the Constitution, and in the oath of presidents to protect the Constitution. In this way, a good party’s motto has already been written into the Constitution:

rConstitution
Support & Protect

Yes, we can limit governments and threatening organizations. Representative Massie, our time is now.

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