Jamie Raskin Drags Wingnut Rep. Glenn Grothman Onto Bus, Takes Him To School On Flag, Constitution
'The Republic for which it stands?' Raskin wrote a paper on that in sixth grade, guy.
Let’s enjoy some very satisfying video from the House of Representatives yesterday, featuring Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) explaining more than a little bit of history to rightwing Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin.
The lesson came during debate on a Republican bill that would add a question about citizenship to the 2030 Census and exclude non-citizens when apportioning congressional seats. The bill eventually passed on a party-line vote, never mind that it’s blatantly unconstitutional.
After all, it’s an election year, and the bill will die in the Senate even before Joe Biden gets a chance to veto it, so why not pass the plainly illegal bill in the House anyway so Goopers can claim Democrats want to unfairly “rig elections” by, uh, upholding the freaking Constitution of the United States?
Quick reminder, since ignoring the Constitution is a perennial goal for Republicans who want to pretend it only applies to citizens, when most of the really basic rights stuff other than voting applies to all the People that are We. When the framers meant citizens they said it, and the rest of the time they said persons.
Especially the Census clause in Article I, Section 2. As you’ll recall, that apportions seats in Congress based on an enumeration of the “whole Number of free Persons,” including indentured servants, but notoriously failing to include “Indians not taxed,” and counting only “three fifths of all other Persons,” i.e., enslaved people. Those latter two categories were made defunct by the 14th Amendment.
Oh yes, and by excluding both undocumented immigrants and legal residents with green cards, the scheme would coincidentally shift a lot of seats out of Democratic states like California and New York and into Republican states (Sorry, also Texas and Florida, too.) It would additionally mean urban districts would have a lot fewer seats, all in the interest being “fair” to citizens.
That’s several kilograms more context than you need for the clip, shared on Twitter by Acyn, showing Grothman frothing about how the American Republic is in danger so we must stop counting all the persons in it. (Go ahead and sprinkle in a little pointless John Birch Society “Republic not a democracy!” bullshit, too).
Grothman grumbles about how the Pledge of Allegiance references the “Republic” (for Richard Stans), and Benjamin Franklin’s explanation that the Constitution established “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Raskin, managing the Democrats’ time in the hearing, said he was really “inspired” by that mention of the Pledge, and mentioned that he had in fact written a brief monograph on the history of the Pledge, or at least a paper about it in sixth grade.
Raskin noted that “radical Baptist minister” Rev. Francis Bellamy was moved to write the original version of the Pledge because he was annoyed that so many Southerners were still saluting the Confederate flag, and so he wanted everyone to remember that the US flag is for the entire Republic, “indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” (Note that while explaining that “under God” wasn’t in there until Congress added it in 1954, following Brown v. Board of Education, Raskin accidentally dropped “indivisible,” oops. And people call him “scholarly,” sad.)
Leaving aside all that “Republic” flummery, Raskin noted that Franklin supported immigration in general, though he didn’t trust Germans much — no telling if that was a dig at the derivation of “Grothman” — and then shared a cute anecdote with some wordplay in it that had nothing to do with citizenship or republics, but it’s a good story.
Raskin said Franklin loaned a friend $100, but the friend later said he couldn’t pay interest on the loan because that was against his religion. Franklin, that witty bastard, replied, “You mean to tell me it’s against your principles to pay me the interest, but it’s against your interest to pay me the principal. […] I can see I’m not going to get either.”
That was Raskin’s shaggy-dog way of getting to his point:
“Well look, here our principles and our interests converge, very much.
“The principles are set forth in the Constitution, which is we count everybody and everybody is part of the census, and everybody is part of the reapportionment process. It’s been like that since 1790. We don’t need to start finger-painting on the Constitution with this silly election year proposal.”
So that was some pretty good education on US history and the Constitution, but because Republicans have the majority in the House, thanks in part to partisan gerrymandering, they went ahead and got out their finger paints anyway.
All the more reason to keep the bastards out of power this fall, the end.
[HuffPost / Acyn on Twitter / Headline gleefully stolen from “ChidiNwatu” on Twitter.]
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I love the way that Raskin says "not an insane asylum" - whether he felt he had to tell them what he meant, because words, or he had a different meaning, I don't care. J6 tried to take him, cancer tried to take him, and crushing grief tried to take him, but he's here and we should all be grateful.
And I could say more, but I will conclude with this:
Charles Campisi
@1813Doncarlo
When you have either the arrogance or stupidity to presume to teach Jamie Raskin - a brilliant constitutionsl scholar & someone with an in-depth knowledge of American history - about the meaning of the word "Republic," you better have more than just a big mouth.
https://twitter.com/1813Doncarlo/status/1788371405442093353