I am not a supporter of term limits, never said I was. You once again read to much into something and posted a bunch of crap distracting from the core issues of the topic. I never created any line between legislating and governing. I was assessing the desire of conservatives for a Washington outsider. Since you mix your personal view with your analysis all the time, I am not surprised you assume others do so as well.
We can all state positions including those with which we disagree. Someone said that conservatives tend to support term limits -- which seems true. It is easy for people to impute reasons to contemporary conservatives -- for example, that they want participation in the legislative process to not be a career, that continuance in office allows legislators to go out of tough with the "Real World", that the legislative process inherently corrupts elected officials... to which a liberal might retort that the "Real World" looks very different between a minority-dominated district in Houston and some largely-rural and predominately white district in the Texas Panhandle and that politicians expected to represent voters in both districts can reasonably be expected to express political reality very differently, that constituent service becomes potentially better the longer that one holds onto a legislative seat, that lobbyists get better knowledge of how to use the political process to effect change than do politicians, that rapid turnover of legislative offices encourages a revolving door between special interests and government in which being an elected official is just another item on a career as a business executive, and that even without term limits voters can oust elected officials who prove incompetent or corrupt. Maybe it is easier to develop into a reliable 'conservative' stooge for Big Business than it is to develop as a liberal because conservative positions more easily come from a simpler explanation of principles and policies because liberalism implies a more complicated understanding of human nature instead of profit-and-loss. Profit-and-loss isn't everything even for conservatives as persons.
Did I have to put it so crudely as "I just don't trust the b@stards"? The Movement Conservatives or our time are no longer the likes of Everett Dirksen who recognized that the common man needed to believe that he was getting something from the overall system. To describe them as mirror-image Marxists -- that is, people who believe in the very things that Marx and all later socialists and liberals consider objectionable. Capitalism and the conservatism that largely defends capitalism both need a human face lest capitalism and conservatism become an endorsement of economic cruelty for the enrichment and pampering of elites as the primary objective of business and government.
Conservatism needs to grow up. Material gain and indulgence aren't everything -- which explains why there aren't as many pimps and pushers as a very sordid view of human nature would suggest.
The thread is suppose defend longterm incumbents and insiders. That section initially included Lincoln short government experience as well. I removed it to reduce the length. It wasn't meant to be a hit on Obama, but a defense of "alleged" outsiders.
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Insiders are inevitable in any political order irrespective of its ideology whether those people are born to the position (aristocracy), own the resources and manage the labor (plutocracy), develop and exploit information that they keep to themselves (bureaucracy), develop power over people through fear of horrific consequences for any misstep (tyranny), or elected (democracy). Just think of Soviet reality in practice: the revolutionaries ended up going after each other and becoming either enforcers or victims, and real power gravitated to an unelected Party boss for decisions on who lived and who died and to politically-reliable bureaucrats who could enrich themselves by arranging what a free market would otherwise make easy.
...It is a facile enterprise to look to the "intent of the Founders". Without question they saw relatively few people as appropriate holders of political power: officials chosen by the People in periodic and competitive elections, persons appointed by the elected President and subject to Congressional approval, and persons under the employ, as necessary for the execution of appropriate power but strictly-limited authority and who could be fired for incompetence or misconduct. Innovations in that norm have inherent dangers. Economic interests never got representation (which would be fascism as a political structure) as such. Although much ambiguity remains on what role government has in the economy (so long as it does not steal assets from owners) and in practice the methods of serving people the Founders were quite clear about things that the government could not do -- like torture, summary executions, suppression of press and speech,
ex post facto laws and bills of attainder, sale of offices, and religious discrimination. They also determined an overall pattern of political structure and practice modified little since -- notably checks and balances on power within the government .
Elected officials were generally understood to have independence from all but their voters and not to be responsible to some Party Boss or to some "Commission of Public Morals" (contemporary Iran), or lobbyists deputized by corporate interests to supervise them in practice. The latter is in the formative stage in America, and that is the formative stage of a new manner of undemocratic government. It is so novel that it has no obvious name for it; one would have to coin a term for "Government by lobbyists and enforcers of economic interests". Maybe in Wisconsin it is already being called "Walker-ism" and in Florida it is being called "Scott-ism".
We still have the means to vote out incompetent, corrupt, irresponsible, or sold-out politicians when they seek re-election. We the People are the ultimate check and balance against executive despotism and a legislature running amok or selling out. If We the People abandon that responsibility then we are at the mercy of a government that rules us with impunity.