Breitbart reported today that 8.7 million more Republicans voted in the GOP primaries in 2016 than in 2012.
That’s a 60 percent increase, which Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus attributed primarily to President Obama’s presidency: “After eight years of Barack Obama, voters throughout the country know that four years of Hillary Clinton would be disastrous,” Priebus said in an email. “Almost to a state, we are seeing record turnout because voters know it’s the Republican Party that has the ideas and solutions that will move America in the right direction.”
Republican voters, it seems, are tired of executive overreach, and they believe a GOP president will offer a solution.
But is this belief based on historical precedent or wishful thinking? The fact is, presidents from both parties have been complicit in expanding the size and scope of the federal government. Both sides of the federal aisle have exponentially increased the national debt as well as their control over state legislatures.
Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, for example, expanded the national debt more than President Bill Clinton when taken as a percentage of GDP. Their numbers pale in comparison to President Obama's, but they exemplify the fact that good fiscal policies do not always come from one side of the aisle.
And even if the next Republican president wants to shrink the national debt or the bureaucracy in Washington, he or she will not be able to accomplish so arduous a task in four or eight years.
An Article V Convention of States is the only solution as big as the problem in Washington, D.C. The federal government has gained its power largely through improper interpretations of the Constitution. The only way to shrink that power is through constitutional amendments that strike down those improper interpretations and restore the Constitution to what the Founders intended it to be: a barrier against federal overreach.
