{"id":1989,"date":"2013-07-01T00:39:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T00:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/07\/01\/term-limits-still-a-bad-idea"},"modified":"2013-07-01T00:39:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T00:39:00","slug":"term-limits-still-a-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1989","title":{"rendered":"Term limits still a bad idea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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One of my Facebook \u201cfriends\u201d recently posted a comment to a post I put out there calling for \u201cterm limits\u201d in Texas.<\/p>\n

Her response was to Gov. Rick Perry\u2019s pending announcement on whether he\u2019ll seek another term\u00a0 in office. I should stipulate here that my Facebook \u201cfriend\u201d is an ardent Democrat who lives in Donley County, Texas; Perry, of course, is an equally ardent Republican who\u2019s served as governor since December 2000.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing my Donley County pal\u2019s insistence on term limits is based more than just a little bit on partisan preference.<\/p>\n

I need to say it once more: We already have term limits for Texas governor, or for any other statewide office for that matter. We call \u2018em \u201celections.\u201d <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never voted for Perry for any statewide office he\u2019s ever sought and held. Not for agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor or governor. <\/p>\n

But since I live in a state where quite often my ballot gets counteracted by others who think differently from me, I accept the reality that majority-rule matters. And I\u2019m totally on board with that.<\/p>\n

The 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution established a two-term limit for president of the United States. The amendment was pushed through by a Republican-led Congress that had grown fearful of a potential \u201cimperial presidency,\u201d particularly one that featured a four-times-elected Democrat \u2013 Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR died only a few months after being elected in November 1944 to his fourth term and the amendment was ratified a couple of years after that.<\/p>\n

Ronald Reagan once lamented publicly that he wished he could have run for a third term. So did Bill Clinton. <\/p>\n

And even though I\u2019ve never lived in a time when the 22nd Amendment wasn\u2019t the law, I agree with them. The notion of term limits goes against the potential will of the public.<\/p>\n

Do I think Rick Perry should be \u201cgovernor for life\u201d? Of course not. If I had my way, he\u2019d never would have become governor in the first place. Democrat John Sharp \u2013 who lost narrowly to Perry in 1998 \u2013 would have ascended to the governor\u2019s office after George W. Bush\u2019s election as president in 2000 \u2026 if I had my way.<\/p>\n

But we don\u2019t need mandated term limits. If someone is doing a bad enough job in office, the voters will take care of him or her at the next election. Rick Perry has managed \u2013 and it\u2019s a bit of a mystery to me \u2013 to keep enough Texans happy with the job he\u2019s doing to enable him to keep doing it.<\/p>\n\n

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One of my Facebook \u201cfriends\u201d recently posted a comment to a post I put out there calling for \u201cterm limits\u201d in Texas. Her response was to Gov. Rick Perry\u2019s pending announcement on whether he\u2019ll seek another term\u00a0 in office. I should stipulate here that my Facebook \u201cfriend\u201d is an ardent Democrat who lives in Donley … Continue reading Term limits still a bad idea<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}