Which of the Framers and Signers of the Constitution Could Win The 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination? [75*-4]

I RECENTLY POSTED a series of hub questions asking whether hubbers felt that Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Grover Cleveland, or Abraham Lincoln could win the 2012 Republican presidential nomination today. I haven't received that many answers yet, which is a bit surprising, but hopefully more will come in more the questions get lost in the miasma of hub questions. I feel it is an important set of questions because of where both the Conservatives and Tea Party see themselves as the defender of the U.S. Constitution ... as it was intended to mean when it was written.

One test of whether that is a legitimate characterization of themselves, or whether others should believe that of them, is their willingness to back the framers and signers of the U.S. Constitution for President, if they were alive today. The question I pose is if Conservatives like John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor; Tea Partyers like its founder Dick Armey and major players like Sarah Palin, Michelle Backmann, Rick Santorum, etc; or even Libertarians like Ron and Rand Paul would vote for the very people who had a major input into or signed the Constitution they say they are trying to protect and that those to their political left are trying to destroy.

Who are the people that I am talking about; the people responsible for the original Constitution and Bill of Rights. While I won't list them all, you can look them up here, these are the ones you are most likely to recognize:

1. George Washington, VA
2. John Adams, MA
3. Thomas Jefferson, VA
4. Benjamin Franklin, PA
5. James Madison, VA
6. Alexander Hamilton, NY

Other names you might recognize are Roger and Gouverneur Morris of PA, Charles and Charles C. Pickney of SC, John Blair of VA, and William Blount of NC. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were not at the Constitutional Convention and did not sign the Constitution because they were overseas on Ambassadorship duty.

So, looking at this list of six of the most famous writers of and contributors to the United States Constitution, which ones, dear reader, do you think Conservatives and Tea Party members would support for president as the nominee of their party? My guess is not a oneof them because, while there are aspects pf each person's political philosophy that will resonate with Conservatives and Tea Partyers, there are many more beliefs that do not. I would offer that each one in the current set of candidates at the CNN/Tea Party debate last Monday would beat any one of these six, hands down in a Conservative primary.

If this is, in fact, true, exactly how does this jibe with the Conservative and Tea Party claim of being the defenders of the Constitution? This is confusing to me. It is confusing because it makes no sense that they would want to defend a philosophical document, a liberal and revolutionary one at that, put together by a group of people whose basic philosophy the Conservatives and Tea Party members fundamentally disagree with.

Who do the Conservatives and Tea Party members agree with? I would suggest they agree with the founders who support a different document; people such as Patrick Henry, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, all of Virginia; George Clinton and Robert Yates of New York (who attended but left the Constitutional Convention); and Samuel Byran of Pennsylvania. I believe each of these individuals could and would win the Republican nomination; especially George Mason for I would argue he is the architect of the Conservative/Tea Party political platform. What do all of these founding members of freedom from England, many of them were very instrumental in the success of the Revolution by the way, have in common? They were the leaders of the fight against the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and supporters of what the Constitution was replacing; the Articles of Confederation.

It is my theory that it is this document, the Articles of Confederation, that today's Conservatives and Tea Party members are trying protect, whether they realize it or not; it is this document, not the current Constitution, which incorporates all of the States Rights values they express in their debates and political speeches; it is this document to which they are desperately trying to resurrect by putting as many parts of a straight-jacket on the federal government as is within their power to do.

I will leave it there and look forward to the comments. More in another hub.