Republican political candidates especially Tea Party Republicans running for office often tout their belief in limited government, lower taxes, financial responsibility etc that on the surface seem like noble libertarian ideas. However, some political candidates are taking radical positions like supporting raising the retirement age for Social Security or privatizing it, they say they want to defend the U.S. Constitution and insist that Congress must prove any legislation it passes is constitutional. It's worth asking:  Do all or any of them support the U.S. Constitution as it exists today or do they want to repeal amendments to it? Some Republicans have come out in favor of repealing the 17th Amendment allowing direct election of U.S. Senators, others want to repeal the 14th Amendment guaranteeing U.S. citizenship to anyone born in the country.  Why are they taking such radical stances favoring repealing some amendments to the U.S. Constitution that have been effective.

So far their reasoning on ending birthright citizenship by repealing the 14th Amendment has to do with the issue of children of illegal immigrants being born as citizens -- this they think is wrong and should not be allowed to happen (to be fair this issue may not have been anticipated by those responsible for passing the 14th Amendment at the time it passed; regardless repealing the 14th Amendment would end birthright citizenship for children of legal immigrants born here as well -- it was passed to guarantee citizenship to children of former slaves after the end of the American Civil War) but this is such a radical idea and could lead to citizenship being revoked unfairly or unjustly from applying to children born in the U.S. regardless of skin color, national origin etc.

So when Republicans talk about defending the U.S. Constitution it is worth asking do they support the Constitution as it exists today, the Constitution of the 1920s, the Constitution of 1866-1900 etc?  Lets urge Republicans to defend the Constitution as it exists today and stop pushing radical ideas.