Thread by @petersagal

[Looks around Twitter]

Has no one taken on this disingenuous and ahistorical op-ed by Justin Amash? No?

[Puts on Fake Constitutional Scholar Hat, festooned with stars and stripes for the holiday.]

washingtonpost.com/opinions/justi…

First, disingenuous: Mr Amash is not leaving the GOP because of extreme partisanship on both sides. He is leaving because he bravely and selflessly called for the impeachment of a President of his own party and said President and party turned on him, as he probably foresaw.

I mean, it didn't happen that long ago. We all remember it. It was a brave and principled thing to do, in a time lacking in such actions, and I have no idea why he's dissembling about it.

Ahistorical: while the Founders may have decried partisanship and factions they called them both into existence with the design of the Constitution, which gives power (executive, legislative, and sadly now, judicial) to whoever gets the most votes... usually, 50% plus 1.

Which means, in practice, that if you want political power, you have to ally with any many people as you can, organize them, and all vote together, and hope you've done a better job than the other side.

There have always been, and will probably always be, two major political parties, because of that 50% plus 1 rule. Whenever a party split into two before a national election -- 1860, 1912 -- it loses to the other, and then the party reforms into one. (More or less.)

Thus the two parties have abided longer than their founders, longer than their original causes, longer than multiple generations of officials. They can shift radically from one pole to the other -- from (say) pro-slavery and white supremacy, to multi-racial and pro-civil rights.

It's a historical fact! It can't be D'Nied!

So if Mr Amash does run and win re-election as an "independent," he will almost certainly caucus with one party or the other, just as independent Senators King and Sanders do, because otherwise he has no power or influence at all.

Finally, this line: "In fact, they designed a political system so ordered around liberty that, in succeeding generations, the Constitution itself would strike back against the biases and blind spots of its authors." GRRRR.

The "Constitution itself" doesn't do anything. It is a piece of parchment. It does not flap its crackly wings and fly about, defending itself. It is and has been preserved by men and women who chose to preserve it, often at personal cost.

Examples range from the mundane, like accepting the result of an election even if your candidate didn't win, to the historical, like Nixon and Gore obeying Supreme Court decisions that cost them the Presidency.

Or, for that matter, a Congressman deciding to put principle over ambition and announcing his own party's President should be impeached for violations of that same Constitution. Whoever that guy is, I applaud him.