For those wondering about how far to the left he truly is, former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who is being feted by the media and treated as a possible front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, is questioning whether the United States Constitution is still relevant.
The Washington Post, in an interview with O’Rourke, noted that in the interview O’Rourke vacillated between “a bright-eyed hope that the United States will soon dramatically change its approach to a whole host of issues and a dismal suspicion that the country is now incapable of implementing sweeping change.” Thus the Post asked O’Rourke which perspective he favored, prompting this reply:
I’m hesitant to answer it because I really feel like it deserves its due, and I don’t want to give you a — actually, just selfishly, I don’t want a sound bite of it reported, but, yeah, I think that’s the question of the moment: Does this still work? Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships . . . and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?
The redolent vacillating displayed by O’Rourke in the interview included this answer when asked what should be implemented vis-à-vis visa overstays: “I don’t know.” Another evasive mode he displayed was to constantly call for a debate on an issue without committing to a policy he would espouse. The Post remarked, “When it comes to many of the biggest policy issues facing the country today, O’Rourke’s default stance is to call for a debate — even on issues related to the border and immigration, which he has heavily emphasized in videos posted to Facebook and Instagram over the past month.”
Asked why he wouldn’t commit to a hard position on issues, O’Rourke replied, “That’s a problem when you’re like, ‘It will be a wall,’ or ‘It will be this,’ or ‘We can only do it with this.’ The genius is we can nonviolently resolve our differences, though I won’t get to my version of perfect or I, working with you, will get to something better than what we have today . . . It’s rare that someone’s ever been able to impose their will unilaterally in this country. We don’t want that.”
O’Rourke resorted to platitudes like this one: “I trust the wisdom of people. And I’m confident — especially after having traveled Texas for two years — people are good, fundamentally, and if given the choice to do the right thing, they will. To do the good thing, they will.”
Asked about President Trump’s intent to withdraw troops from Syria, O’Rourke favored “a debate, a discussion, a national conversation about why we’re there, why we fight, why we sacrifice the lives of American service members, why we’re willing to take the lives of others … There may be a very good reason to do it. I don’t necessarily understand — and I’ve been a member of Congress for six years. We haven’t had a meaningful discussion about these wars since 2003.”
The Post noted that O’Rourke has only recently decided to get involved in policy regarding the southern border, despite the fact that he represented a majority Hispanic border district for six years, writing, “For all his current focus on the border, O’Rourke played a negligible role in shaping immigration policy during his six years in Congress, which ended this month.”