ANALYSIS/OPINION:

If President Trump made a blunder during his campaign, it was that he placed all his emphasis on the presidency and did not ask for new Republican members of Congress from the new patriot movement. We sent the same establishment Republicans to Washington, and we are getting the same squishiness and pre-emptive surrender to socialist, statist, totalitarian Democrats we got before.

Yet the answer is not term limits. Some of the greatest mischief done by Congress has been in lame-duck sessions by politicians who were no longer accountable to the voters. I fear that term limits might turn every session of Congress into a lame-duck session. A better approach would be to limit every representative to once again representing no more than 30,000 people, which Alexander Hamilton claimed was the optimum number.

Currently each representative “represents” some 750,000 people. This would give us a House with 10,000-11,000 members, but I believe our modern methods of communication would make this viable. Among the advantages there would be Congressional districts that would once again be more or less homogenous; campaigns could be run on fairly modest budgets; constituents would find it far easier to hold their representatives accountable and a single special interest would have to corrupt over 5,000 people in order to be successful.

As for the Senate, I recommend repealing the 17th Amendment, which was a serious mistake. It essentially changed the Senate into a glorified House of Representatives whose members serve longer terms. Since 1918 the states have not had anyone in Washington truly representing them.

THOMAS M. CRAWFORD

Laurel

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