With evidence indicating that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons in Syria, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Sunday on “Face the Nation” that “there’s a growing consensus in the U.S. Senate that the United States should get involved.”

Source: Graham: “Growing consensus” in Senate for U.S. action in Syria – CBS News.

It is interesting that Senator Graham is able to find a “growing consensus” in the Senate but what about a consensus of the people who elected them? Do any of these guys actually listen to their constituents anymore?  Everyone knows that Senator Graham is a war hawk. He like Senator McCain seem to have never found a conflict they didn’t want to be involved in.  I thank the Lord everyday that we didn’t give Mr McCain the Oval Office five years ago. Lord knows how many more wars we would be in right now. President Obama is bad enough for continuing to throw money into the two he inherited.

But, getting back to the topic at hand just where do our elected representatives go to find out how to vote? It seems that the party they belong to is the top source. If the party leaders says vote for or against something then they almost always heed that call. They know if they don’t they won’t get the powerful committee assignments they so desire and Washington, if nothing else, is about power. The second source seems to be the lobbyists. Since many of these guys go on to be lobbyists themselves this is known as investing in your future to them. Kind of like almost every general who does the same thing at the DOD.

The next one on the list  of who are representative listen to seems to be the NRA and folks like Grover Norquist, or Rush Limbaugh. When any of these yahoos open their mouths scores of our supposed representative anxiously await their marching orders.

Pretty far down the list for how to vote comes the people they represent. That is a sad but obvious fact in today’s world. One basic thing that allows that to happen is that we the electorate seem oblivious to the power that we hold. Only about half of us even bother to vote and the half that do seem more attached to a party line or just plain selfishness than to the common good of all of us.

If only the electorate realized that they could easily change almost anything to do with our political system if they only had the will to do it. The true power in the country still resides in the vote; someday we may actually come to realize that fact.

The latest polls show that almost 2/3 of us think that the U.S. should stay out of this latest conflict. We don’t need to be the policemen of the world. Let some of the regional players who have much more to lose  get involved. If we kept our nose out of these things I’m sure others would come forward. But why should they bear that burden now when they can so easily push it off on us?