One thing we can always be certain\nof is that Democrats are the ultimate pragmatists. If they were a football team and they\ncouldn\u2019t beat my Philadelphia Eagles with eleven men on the field, they\u2019d find\na way to get thirteen or fourteen players on their side of the football, and it\nwouldn\u2019t matter much what the NFL rule book or the game officials had to say\nabout it. It\u2019s just the way they play\nthe game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, during the mid-1930s, FDR complained that far too many of his\nNew Deal social and economic initiatives were being thwarted by the Supreme\nCourt. These included decisions on\nSocial Security, federal taxes, and monetary policy, among others. Thus, in a March 9, 1937 radio address to the\nnation, he had this to say: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLast Thursday I described the American form of government as a three-horse team provided by the Constitution to the American people so that their field might be plowed. \u00a0The three horses are, of course, the three branches of government – the Congress, the executive, and the courts.\u00a0 Two of the horses, the Congress and the executive, are pulling in unison today; the third is not. Those who have intimated that the president of the United States is trying to drive that team, overlook the simple fact that the presidents, as chief executive, is himself one of the three horses. It is the American people themselves who are in the driver s seat. \u00a0It is the American people themselves who want the furrow plowed. \u00a0It is the American people themselves who expect the third horse to fall in unison with the other two\u2026\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat\nis my proposal? It is simply this:\nwhenever a judge or justice of any federal court has reached the age of seventy\nand does not avail himself of the opportunity to retire on a pension, a new\nmember shall be appointed by the president then in office, with the approval,\nas required by the Constitution, of the Senate of the United States\u2026 The number\nof judges to be appointed would depend wholly on the decision of present judges\nnow over seventy, or those who would subsequently reach the age of seventy.<\/em> In other words, if Roosevelt\u2019s radical\nsocial and economic proposals couldn\u2019t pass muster before the Supreme Court,\nhe\u2019d gradually increase the size of the court from six justices to as many as\nfifteen by adding one additional justice each time a sitting justice reached\nthe age of seventy but chose not to retire. \nIt was his way of getting that third horse to pull the way he wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Roosevelt\u2019s \u201ccourt packing\u201d plan was\nnothing new to Republicans, then or now. \nIn a February 7, 1894 speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate,\nSenator George F. Hoar (R-MA) said the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWherever there is a crevice in our\nprotection of the freedom of the ballot, there you will find the Democratic\nParty trying to break through. Wherever\nwe have left open an opportunity to get possession of an office, contrary to\nthe true and constitutional will of the majority, there you will find that\nparty pressing; there you will find that party exercising an ingenuity before\nwhich even the great inventive genius of the American People, exerted in other\ndirections, fails and is insignificant in the comparison.\u201d The result of their treachery\nwas language added to Article I, Section 2, which reads as follows: \u201c<\/em>Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the\nseveral States which may be included within this Union, according to their\nrespective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of\nfree Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and\nexcluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.<\/em><\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the language adopted was skillfully obtuse, their\nintent left nothing to the imagination. In\nother words, in addition to the numbers of free persons and bond servants enumerated\nby census in each state, the slave states could increase their representation\nin the U.S. Congress by counting each slave as three-fifths of a person. Although the slaves were viewed as\n\u201cproperty,\u201d without citizenship and voting rights, Democrats saw no moral\ncontradiction in counting each of them as three-fifths of a person when the\ncensus-taker arrived at their door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The significance of the three-fifths rule was such that, by 1793, five years after the Constitution was ratified, slaveholding\nstates had 47 congressmen, 14 more than the 33 they would have been entitled to\nin the absence of the three-fifths rule. \nAs might be expected, in the 74 years between the ratification of the\nConstitution and the Emancipation Proclamation, the three-fifths rule had a significant impact on the presidency, the leadership of the House\nof Representatives, and the ideological makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democrats of today are much the same as they were 125 years\nago when Senator Hoar subjected them to a well-deserved public beat-down. They continue to specialize in the practice of\nidentity politics, playing the poor against the rich, blacks against the\nwhites, the uneducated against the educated, the young against the old, and women\nagainst men. In other words, wherever\nthey can find a \u201ccrevice\u201d in our society, some appearance of division, they\nfind creative ways to exploit it and to sow the seeds of discord and victimhood. Without the ability to convince large numbers\nof people that they have been victimized, pointing the finger of blame at alleged\nvictimizers\u2026 most often conservatives and Republicans\u2026 the Democratic Party\ncould not exist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the Emancipation Proclamation and the adoption of the\n13th<\/sup>, 14th<\/sup>, and 15th<\/sup> Amendments, Democrats\nhave been forced to reevaluate their approach toward African-Americans. Whereas they were happy to consider blacks as\nthree-fifths of a person for some 75 years, the fact that blacks had been\ngranted citizenship and voting rights called for a totally new approach. And while the period between 1865 and the 1954\nBrown v. Board of Education<\/em> decision of the Supreme Court can best be\ndescribed as the \u201cKKK era,\u201d in which Democratic \u201cnight-riders\u201d murdered\nthousands of blacks and white Republicans, the party\u2019s relationship with black\nAmericans quickly evolved into a smothering paternalism as white Democrats came\nto the realization that they could no longer oppress blacks as second-class\ncitizens through violence and intimidation. \nThey quickly found creative ways to purchase the loyalty of blacks\nthrough taxpayer-supported social welfare schemes, and the descendants of\nslaves were quickly transformed into the most reliable voting bloc of the Democratic\nParty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cthree-fifths of a person\u201d strategy of 1787 produced exceptional results\nfor southern Democrats in terms of congressional representation. What better way to repeat that success in the\nearly 21st<\/sup> century than to inflate the populations of the states\ncontaining the greatest numbers of illegal aliens by including them in the\nnational census. It is the one and only\nreason why Democrats now oppose having a citizenship question on the 2020\ncensus form. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the U.S. Census Bureau prepares to print questionnaires for\nthe 2020 national census, they are also locating and identifying every\nresidence in every city, town, village, and rural area in the nation. In 2020, census enumerators will be visiting\nevery household, gathering data from individuals who failed to voluntarily\ncomplete and return the census forms that will be mailed to each household. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Trump administration sees the 2020 census as an opportunity to learn a great\ndeal about who is living in our country, legally or illegally, and to correct population-related\nanomalies created in previous census years. \nIn other words, how many current U.S. residents are citizens, how many\nare legal resident aliens, how many are illegal aliens, and how do 2020 census\nfigures compare to 2010 figures when the Obama administration saw no value in\nasking census respondents whether they were citizens or non-citizens. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Democrats across the country are understandably concerned over the makeup of\nthe Congress and the reallocation of federal funds if the citizenship question is\nplaced on the 2020 census form\u2026 with a stern warning that to answer any\nquestion falsely is to invite federal criminal prosecution. And although Democrats have threatened to\nfight the decision in the federal courts, the president appears resolved that\nthe question will appear on the 2020 census form\u2026 one way or another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, if the citizenship question is not<\/em> on the 2020 census form\nand Republicans find it more and more difficult to win majorities in the lower\nHouse of Congress, they will be understandably haunted by the suspicion that they\nand their family members are no longer counted as whole persons by our federal government. \nInstead, Democrats will have been successful, once again, in causing a\nmajor segment of the U.S. population to count as just three-fifths of persons. One thing we can always be certain of is that Democrats are the ultimate pragmatists. If they were a football team and they couldn\u2019t beat my Philadelphia Eagles with eleven men on the field, they\u2019d find a way to get … Continue reading
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\n\u201cIf, for instance, any one of the six\njustices of the Supreme Court now over the age of seventy should retire as\nprovided under the plan, no additional place would be created. Consequently, although there never can be more\nthan fifteen, there may be only fourteen, or thirteen, or twelve. And there may\nbe only nine.\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\nSenator Hoar and other Republicans were fully aware of the lengths to which\nDemocrats would go in order to win and hold power. They were fully aware that, in 1787, Democrats\nexercised their considerable political ingenuity to win major concessions in\nthe U.S. Constitution. As delegates to\nthe Constitutional Convention struggled to complete their work in Philadelphia\nduring the long hot summer of 1787, the delegates from the southern states\nschemed to win a greater number of seats in the Congress than they would\notherwise have been entitled to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\nPaul R. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time\nmember of the U.S. Electoral College. He\ncurrently lives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma\u2019s\nGreen Country.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"