Never has the great liberal White Elephant Constitution in Exile been discussed more frequently and with less reason than here at the Reform Club, but we've become positively intoxicated by stretching this canard to the breaking point. After mentioning that Ramesh Ponnuru (a notable conservative) mentioned the Constitution in Exile in a blog post, Mr. Ponnuru took the opportunity to make clear his own position on the unicorn of the conservative world.
Here it is, in full, reproduced at the same level as the original post noticing his post! That's the kind of accountability you get in the blogosphere! Read below:
EXILE, CTD. [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Perhaps, given this post, I should clarify my views about the "Constitution in Exile."
1) I think it can safely be said that no conservative has ever used the phrase as much as Jeffrey Rosen and Cass Sunstein do.
2) In some sense, most conservatives believe that we are exile from the Constitution--that the way we are governed corresponds less to that document than it used to do and that we ought to increase that correspondence. I certainly do.
3) But the phrase, as used by the people who use it most, means something more than what I wrote in 2). It means that there is a movement, with a significant chance of success (or at least of doing damage), that wants to undo the New Deal and Great Society from the federal bench. This I do not believe. Nor would I want such a movement to exist.
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