The Lawyers' Party

[Animal]

[Animal]

I can agree that it's framed as propaganda. What isn't? I'd love to see an article out there which isn't framed as propaganda. And yeah, there may be exaggerations, framing intended to make the case that isn't quite honest etc. However. My concern is: does the premise hold true? This is the part that actually affects me and people's day to day lives. It's fine if it doesn't hold true, but that's my personal curiosity.

[Animal]

I found the original article. It's from 2008, not 2012. And this one which is different than what I have above.
https://www.americanthinker.com/arti...ers_party.html

August 9, 2012 The Lawyers Party

By Bruce Walker
There's a vicious cycle in America: politicians make up onerous laws and regulations, and lawyers get rich exploiting them. But the situation is even worse when the politicians are the lawyers -- or in other words, the Democratic Party.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with lawyers or the legal profession. Lawyers like Coolidge, Cleveland, Lincoln, Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, and John Quincy Adams have been some of the most principled presidents in our nation's history. If conservatives want a system of laws and not of men, then lawyers are an indispensable part of that system.

No, it is not the presence of lawyers in politics which bedevils us today; it is, instead, the iron control which lawyers have on the Democratic Party and the concomitant eagerness of Democrats to produce a vast labyrinth of laws, regulations, and court decisions intended to govern every aspect of American life.

There has always been an inherent conflict in having those who live by wading clients through the complexity of laws and regulations also hold offices which determine the complexity of laws and regulations. Obama, who in 2009 suggested that doctors perform unnecessary surgery to make money, surely grasps this tension.

There is also a latent constitutional issue with having practicing attorneys, "officers of the court," or the judicial branch of government be also officers of the other branches of government. This is not always an esoteric distinction: Clinton was disbarred by a federal judge for lying in his deposition, a sanction which could not be imposed upon a citizen who is not de jure a member of the federal judiciary.

Lawyers have always been overrepresented in the presidency. Seven of the sixteen Republican presidents have been lawyers: Lincoln, Hayes, Harrison, McKinley, Taft, Coolidge, and Nixon. Nine of the fifteen Democrat presidents have been lawyers: Jackson, Van Buren, Polk, Pierce, Cleveland, Wilson, FDR, Clinton, and Obama.

But more and more the Democratic Party has been led by lawyers -- and, at that, lawyers who are deeply mired in the legal profession. Bill Clinton was not just Arkansas attorney general but he was also a professor of law at the University of Arkansas. Hillary was a full partner in the Rose Law Firm. Obama lectured at the University of Chicago on constitutional law; Michelle Obama also practiced law. Vice President Biden is a lawyer.

In the last few decades, the Democratic Party has placed on its national ticket almost exclusively candidates who have gone to law school. In fact, since 1972, only three candidates who have not gone to law school have been on the top or the bottom of the Democrat ticket: McGovern (1972), Carter (1976 and 1980), and Benson (1988). In stark contrast, every Republican ticket since 1980 has had at least one candidate who did not go to law school on the ticket: Reagan (1980 and 1984), George H. Bush (1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992), Kemp (1996), George W. Bush (2000 and 2004), and Palin (2008).

In 2008, all of the serious candidates for the Democrat nomination -- Obama, Clinton, and Edwards -- were lawyers, while there were serious candidates for the Republican nomination, like Huckabee and Paul, who never set foot in law school. This year, of course, there are no serious non-lawyers seeking the Democrat nomination, but several serious Republican candidates, like Cain, Gingrich, and Paul, were not lawyers.

The near-monopoly of lawyers at the top of the Democratic Party helps explain the highly theoretical and profoundly impractical nature of Democrat policy. Even Republican lawyers who went to law school, like Romney or Cheney, ran businesses and had to make payrolls and comply with federal business regulations. Democrats on the national ticket in the last few decades have all been lawyers or lifelong politicians (like Nancy Pelosi, the child of a Democrat dynasty) or both.

This overrepresentation of lawyers in the Democratic Party extends to the Senate, where 66% of Senate Democrats are lawyers, compared to 45% of Senate Republicans. The top five Democrat leadership positions in the Senate are held by lawyers: Biden, Inouye, Reid, Durbin, and Schumer. Two of the four Republican Senate leaders, McConnell and Kyl, are lawyers, while the other two, Barasso and Thune, are not.

In the House of Representatives, only one Democrat leader -- Hoyer -- is a lawyer compared to two of the five Republicans who are lawyers -- Cantor and Hensarling. But the overall composition of House Democrats to House Republicans shows the same tilt towards lawyers: 42% of House Democrats are lawyers, while 28% of House Republicans are lawyers. The pattern persists at the state government level. While 43% of Republican governors are lawyers, 55% of Democrat governors are lawyers.

The Lawyers Party four years ago is the Lawyers Party still. It is also a party with an increasingly distant connection to the real world. Republicans, if they are smart, will make that a theme of the 2012 election.

I'll post another article on this topic that came up in my search just now. I will have to comment & research more thoroughly at a later date, but I feel this is an important topic to unpack, for anyone who is interested.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lawyer...mocratic-party

[Animal]

That second article is actually from 2012. I'll quote it here in case some people can't open it.

Lawyers and Their Rule-Loving Views Dominate the Democratic Party

CHOKE HOLD

Democrats fancy themselves protectors of the downtrodden, but they mostly advance the interests of the legal profession, writes Michael Medved.
Michael Medved


Updated Jul. 13, 2017 11:53PM ET / Published Sep. 06, 2012 4:45AM ET


Mark Wilson / Getty Images

The Democrats gathering in Charlotte would love to cast themselves as the party of working people, or of struggling middle-class families, or of aggrieved and downtrodden Americans in every corner of the economy. In presidential politics, however, a more accurate designation would identify the Dems as the party of lawyers: with the re-nomination of Obama and Biden, all six available spots on the last three national tickets have gone to working attorneys. addressLilly Ledbetter Actreported

[Animal]

I mean - I could post a million articles and every single one will be 'propaganda' because everyone has some point to prove. Sadly when you're dealing with human beings, bias can't be avoided. But I don't have the mindspace, time or luxury to research every name and date, so I have chosen to post other people's articles and allow the premise to be unpacked. To me the impeachment stuff looks like "lawyers gone wild" and a party of Democrats who are focused on impeaching and 'gotcha' - and will do it by any means possible - rather than doing something for the people. I have my own ideas about what's behind this, and how I saw it coming miles away, many many years ago - but I'm curious about this particular premise and if there's anything to it. I like the last article I posted best, as it delves into the mindsets a little bit.

For more than 30 years, however, the GOP almost entirely avoided selecting attorneys for places on the national ticket, reflecting the fact that the Democratic world view connects far more closely to the values and priorities of the legal industrial complex.

This is mostly what interests me. Is there something to this? And I've been feeling this for a while, though I'm not sure if it's a partisan issue:

I do know that Obama promised transparency and then gave us thousands of pages of dense legal jargon for a healthcare bill. And Romneycare was something like 30 pages?? if I remember correctly - I need to look it up and refresh my memory. (Could be off on that, but it was comparatively short.) Obviously one is for the state and one is for the whole country, but still, the result is incomparable.

The Constitution was also short, and clearly legible to the common person. I advocate for going back to the Constitution and what it stood for, generally speaking. To protect us from overreaching government. But anyway.. I am curious. It could be that both parties are equally to blame for this, but if so, I'd want to understand why. I don't take it for granted that there's moral equivalency between the two, as my personal experience has revealed something different; but I am always willing to reconsider my stance and 'sense of things' if I see real life evidence, impact on real people, etc.