Tommy Sowers Supports Term Limits

If you've read many of my comments on other blogs, or were around back in the days of Corner of the Sky, you know I'm always harping on term limits.  I feel strongly that a federally mandated term limits are the only way to really change the way things operate in Congress.  Everyone knows that individual states cannot implement term limits successfully.  The way things are currently run in Washington, that state would never have any effective power.  We need federally mandated term limits to get rid of this idea that Congress is a career, not a temporary job serving the public interest.

Tommy Sowers is a veteran running for the House of Representatives in the Missouri 8th Congressional District.  He is the one who is finally going to boot career politician (and carpet-bagging lobbyist) Jo Ann Emerson out of office.  I was so glad to hear him out saying publically:

". . .as a challenger facing an entrenched D.C. incumbent, I face long odds. For a cancer of incumbency infects our nation. This disease has all but killed the citizen legislators our Founders envisioned. At the root of this disease sits our current Congress, the longest serving in history.
Instead of producing experienced, effective legislators, the cancer grows a partisanship of paralysis, so distasteful that moderates like Sen. Evan Bayh flee. With a game of grudges to settle when in the majority, and uniform opposition when in the minority, we, the American people, lose.


It is past time we isolate and cure this disease. This is why I support a primary treatment--term limits for Congress. Incumbents will say the ballot box serves as a term limit, plausible only if evidence could support this claim. Yet despite decades of abysmal approval numbers under 20%, we see Congress re-elected 95% of the time.


Only a Constitutional amendment would cure the cancer of incumbency. While amending the Constitution is difficult, it can be done. 63 years ago, Americans recognized an imperfect Constitution and passed an amendment to limit the terms of the President. 18 years ago in Missouri, 75% of voters supported a constitutional amendment limiting legislators to eight years in the House and Senate.


My belief in term limits also reflects a belief in the inherent quality of America. In a nation of 300,000,000, no group of 535 individuals could or should be found irreplaceable." 

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