What do Leonard Boswell, Michael Arcuri and Sherrod Brown hold in common?

Well, yes, all of them either voted for H.R. 6166 or (in the case of Mike Arcuri) declared that they would have voted for H.R. 6166 if they’d already been elected to the House of Representatives. The bill, which George W. Bush is ready to sign into law, scuttles habeus corpus rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, installs undemocratic executive committees without review to designate citizens and noncitizens alike as “enemy combatants” without standards for proof, and grants George W. Bush amnesty for his current violations of law. Through their votes and declared stances, Boswell, Arcuri and Brown have placed themselves in the anti-constitution camp.

But I was thinking of something else. Leonard Boswell, Michael Arcuri and Sherrod Brown each made it to the general election without a primary challenge. In the cases of Arcuri and Brown, primary challengers were brusquely brushed off the stage with a combination of incentive and subtle threat so that the nationally-anointed candidates could breeze their way onto the ballot without any questions. Each of these three anointed candidates ended up supporting the Tyrrany Act of H.R. 6166. Is that a coincidence? I don’t think so. When democracy is short-circuited by the termination of primary elections, citizens lose the opportunity to question candidates and discover their issue positions, allowing lemons like Boswell, goof-offs like Arcuri and disappointments like Brown slip on through. And when candidates learn they don’t have to be accountable to the people they represent, disrespect for the Constitution that embodies the very idea of political accountability will follow.

Oh, I know that primaries are awfully inconvenient for political parties. But the nation was not established for the benefit of political parties. It was established to steward the civil rights contained in the United States Constitution. To protect the constitution from fear-mongering demagogues in the Democratic and Republican parties, competition on the field of ideas and ideals must be allowed to occur. It is time for those of us Americans who live outside the political machines to have a say. It is time to bring primaries back.