From the idea of misrepresentation. I don’t think democrat or republican. If you get elected based on X belief. (Small government, fiscal conservatism, etc), and then as soon as you get into the office you act with Y beliefs (Backing Pelosi as House speaker, voting lockstep with every liberal bill that comes down the pike). Then the politician in questions deserves to be villified for what they do. If you kept is honest and still won, then those people deserve what they voted for.

…this ignoramus with the Constitution of the United States and ask him to state just where in the Constitution the federal government has the authority to establish Obamacare or any incarnation thereof.

He will be left stammering like the fool he is.

Hit them with the Constitution. They have no defense against it.

did not run as a liberal in that Republican district. If he misrepresented himself and his ideology, he lied to his constituents who put him in office. Our Glenn Nye VA-02 was recruited by the DNC as part of their planned attack on what they considered vulnerable seats. Now he has been ducking and seeking cover for all of his votes and won’t hold any public Townhalls.

If you get elected under false pretenses, you deserve to get thrown out of office. Come to think of it, maybe that will happen for a whole bunch of them come 2010 and 2012.

Nice Swamp, I seen this. Hope he keeps on insulting his constituents.

Posting this link to a local forum might wake up some of his constituents to his duplicity. I don’t believe Massa ran on a far left agenda at all here in New York. Let’s see what the ‘right wing Republicans’ think of him now. I wonder if that description also translates to nazis and terrorists since he’s talking to such a distinguised group of leftists.

Massa, of course, won’t really know what his constituents feel because he’s hiding out somewhere, avoiding any little nasty confrontations that might make him feel uncomfortable.

Local newspapers are of course very liberal….. but forums where people actually talk about what is really happening in the community and in DC gives a very different perspective.

I lean more on the side of voting your principles, but we as voters are suppose to be voting for office holders who represent your principles. There can be a tension between constituents and principles that can provide a balance. There is usually no problem for voting principles over constituents if either the office holder or the constituents feel strongly about an issue, but not both.

Of course, all deals are off if the politician has misrepresented his principles during the campaign as a couple of posts have already mentioned.

He should do what this guy says, and vote his principles. We do not have a democracy, but a republic.

On the other hand, I have no problem whatsoever with a rep who votes with one finger in the air. Got one. In the end, he makes a calculation as to what will happen on election day, and so do we.

This is an interesting question and it reminds me of the interview Sheila-Jackson Lee gave to Greta van Susteren a couple of days ago. In the interview she said that she was at her town hall meeting, “steadfast ready to hear them and trying to convince them” that Obamacare was the best option. Now, is the point of a town hall meeting to convince the constituents or the other way around? She clearly wasn’t there to hear them. If representatives are of the opinion that they should stay true to principle regardless of what constituents think, is our attending town hall meetings only serving to allow “representatives” to try to sway our opinion?

Show them the Constitution? Ask them where in the Constitution it gives them the right to vote for Obamacare? Well, I have done this on other issues and what liberals come up with, it is the “General Welfare Clause.” They think they can vote for anything they want and defend it by “general welfare.”

They think it’s a matter of opinion. It’s not. And this battle over just what the “general welfare” clause means and whether it confers broad tax and spend authority has been raging for years. Those, like James Madison, who took a strict, constrained view of its meaning eventually lost out to the Hamilton view. If enough of us will demand that the congresscritters take the limited view, at least we have a chance. But if we don’t even do that, the congresscritters will continue to do whatever they darn please.

I posted something about this a few days ago:

http://www.redstate.com/coldwarrior/2009/08/13/we-the-people-get-the-government-we-tolerate/

Bottom line: we all have to challenge our congresscritters, continually, to do the right thing with respect to the Constitution. It’s not written in Chinese. It was written to be understood. The Declaration was to be a reference guide with respect to our philosophy underlying the Constitution. And we have the Federalist Papers to help guide us to the right conclusions as to the meaning of certain words and phrases in the Constitution that may be hard to decipher and apply to a given set of facts and circumstances. And now, with the internet, we can educate ourselves so much more easily than in the past.

Thank you.

ColdWarrior

. . . that he is elected to represent them, but that he will vote his own conscience without regard to public sentiment on the given issue.

Burke, you may recall, was not reelected.

Whatever the merits of the philosophical debate here about the obligations of a House member — represent your views or those of the district that put you on the gravy train — we may be assured that Massa will be flung back into the bait pot.

Understood the upset at Messa is in dissent with his constituents. however, I believe his point is that this issue is so flawed, unconstitutional and dangerous that even he could not possibly choke it down. He is brave, and honest in his opinion, but would have been better off to elaborate on his reasoning, which he will probably have to address really quick now.
If he cannot rubber stamp this insanity…well…we understand.
I guess he must have read it.
He has a point.
Now he will clarify his position, I do not think this guy will run for cover. Not a bad guy for a Democrat.

1) As a conservative Republican, I want any kind of Republican I can get in a liberal area as long as they are voting with us greater than half the time.

So I’ll take the Maine sisters with no problem.

I expect in conservative states like Georgia (where I reside) to get conservatives (and my two are trying my patience with pork-stuffed farm bills, etc).

The purple states are trickier …. like Pennsylvania. In general, I’ll take what I can get here like the blue states …. I disagreed with but was okay with Snarlin Arlen because I don’t know if I can do better and right now I need all the help I can get.

2) Now, on to the question originally raised.

Let us say that you were in a district RIGHT NOW as a congressman where your constituents strongly supported Obama’s health care yet you thought it was an unmitigated disaster and a big step toward Socialism.

Would you vote for it or against it?

I tend to believe that this is a tricky decision for a PRINCIPLED politician. I don’t think there are many of them out there (on either side) since I think most of them are thinking about how to get re-elected.

I think that the answer for me is that I would listen to all of the concerns of my constituents and then vote the way that I thought best served their interest and the overall interest of the United States.

And then I would be ready and willing to answer questions about said decision in the next election cycle.