Personally I don't see the problem with a politician figuring out what their constituents want and doing just that. I hear criticisms of weak politicians just doing whatever seems favorable... isn't that what they're there for? To represent the will of the people?
I don't want to elect someone who will force their ideas into law. I want to elect someone who will force the people's ideas into law. What's wrong with a politician saying "I had this idea, but I changed my mind because the people told me I was wrong"?
Ideally, we elect them to do what we would want them to do if we were fully informed and had time to think about each issue. In practice, both sides of the question are easily used and just as easily alleged to be used as political cover for unsavoriness.
>I want to elect someone who will force the people's ideas into law.
What about when the people choose an ethnic group that they want to lynch en masse, or a particular type of music that they want to make it a crime to distribute, or to start a mass extermination of sharks in coastal waters, or to have the EPA offices torn down and replaced with a massive monument to the 10 commandments?
Yeah, but I don't think freehunter was invoking white line unConstitutional things, which cover your first two items.
The latter two are just reflections on shifting cultural trends. E.g. replace sharks with wolves for the first ... but the latter is cute. Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wetlands....
Sure, but you are failing to account for the part where by ways of mass media you can plant your ideas in the heads of the people which they will then request you enforce.
I don't want to elect someone who will force their ideas into law. I want to elect someone who will force the people's ideas into law. What's wrong with a politician saying "I had this idea, but I changed my mind because the people told me I was wrong"?