Republicans: Repeal the 14th Amendment?

Just when you think that Washington, DC cannot make itself more dysfunctional someone there goes and proves that being dysfunctional seems to have no ceiling, and certainly no floor.

Now that the Senate has fully engaged itself in a discussion of whether the children of illegal aliens, born in the US, have a right to citizenship, and then someone conducts a civics lesson for them demonstrating that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says it must be so, it has come full circle. Now we have Republicans openly questioning whether the 14th Amendment, a matter of settled law for 140 years, should be repealed.

I can’t believe these words even as I type them.

But that is what it has come to. Here we have Mitch McConnell, who would be the Senate Majority Leader had Republicans been a little luckier two years ago, broaching that very subject. From the Washington Post:

“We ought to take a look at it -- hold hearings, listen to the experts on it. I haven't made a final decision about it, but that's something that we clearly need to look at. Regardless of how you feel about the various aspects of immigration reform, I don't think anybody thinks that's something they're comfortable with.”

And here we had Rand Paul just a few short weeks ago running for cover over his suggestion that the Civil Rights Act may have gone a tad too far in guaranteeing equal rights to all comers. Who would have ever thought at that point that a sitting senator would go even farther and suggest that we reconsider a Constitution Amendment that their own party pushed through after the Civil War?

Ah, they forgot about that little thorny detail, I’ll bet. They like to call themselves the party of Lincoln but their values certainly don’t mesh with Lincoln’s do they. I think they should rename their annual fundraising dinner, currently the Lincoln/Reagan Dinner to the Reagan/Bush Dinner, don’t you?

Anyway, as suggested at the bottom of the Post article, and I heartily agree, this is much ado about nothing. No one, not a soul, is going to go anywhere with this. But it makes for perfect rhetoric in a mid-term election that is shaping up to be one of the craziest on record.