another constitutional amendment?

Some right wingers want to amend the Constitution so that:

Under the proposed “repeal amendment,” any federal law or regulation could be repealed if the legislatures of two-thirds of the states voted to do so.


Initially, I viewed it as another affront to the American's people's intelligence. That it was something that the Right could posture with that looked reasonable and important.

While I'm probably correct in that initial assessment, there is some promise to the idea.

What if a bill like Healthcare reform is terribly unpopular. Or the War in Iraq. And there's no way to get through the 60 vote thresh-hold in the Senate. Or the politics in Washington is just so remote from the country because of special interests.

It could be possible that for a certain time the Congress is unrepresentative of the people.

Take for example this recent "Don't Ask Don't tell" repeal. I was against it. It is a bad idea to enshrine gay rights into the military. But according to polls the people support it.

If the Republicans were really against it as they say they were (they weren't) and blocked it until the next Congress, the issue would have been dead for at least the next two years. Even though a majority of the Congress and the President supported it. It could be possible then that 2/3 of the states would pass it.

I doubt if this amendment would ever really have any significance, but I don't see how it hurts.
It could help.

The hyper-partisanship that prevails on seemingly every issue would take hold at some point before 2/3's of the country's legislature acted.

But just in case I'm wrong, and this amendment could do some good, like end the war in Afghanistan or Iraq

I'm for it.