I am not an advocate of state sovereignty. I think it was a terrible idea from the get-go. Furthermore, I am convinced that had there been no need for assuring the southern colonies that no extern government could emancipate their slaves, it is very likely we would never had had state sovereignty at all.
Therefore, the debate about Romneycare and Obamacare has been very interesting to me. Since we no longer have slaveholders' rights or even segregationists' rights to worry about any more, the strongest argument in favor of state sovereignty has probably been that of the “laboratory of democracy” metaphor. That is, sovereign state governments are essential to the Union because they can try out different approaches to solving problems, and the federal government can then adopt tested, proven policies.
But the Romneycare/Obamacare debate suggests that this metaphor may be obsolete.
One reason why Obamacare was implemented as it was is precisely because of how convincing the “laboratory” metaphor has been in the past. This is something that was tested in the state of Massachusetts, under a Republican governor and Democratic legislature. The test worked very well, thereby providing an unusually good example of the laboratory metaphor in action.
However, we now have the actual Republican governor in question running a campaign in which he promises on his first day in office to dismantle the federal implementation of his own program, in spite of the fact that it not only worked well in his state, but is also working satisfactorily at the federal level.
Does this mean that the GOP, the champion of state rights since 1968, has now rejected, or at least deprecated, the “laboratories of democracy” leg of the pro-state sovereignty position? I sincerely hope so.
Perhaps this will bring us that much closer to a national reboot in a constitutional constitution, where we could finally go back to what is essentially the first draft of the 10th Amendment, John Dickinson's first draft of Article III of the Articles of Confederation:
Each colony shall retain and enjoy as much of its present laws, rights, and customs as it may think fit, and reserves to itself the sole and exclusive regulation and government of its internal policies, in all matters that shall not interfere with the articles of this confederation.
Of course, the slaveholders refused to have any part of this, since an abolitionist national government could eventually decide that slavery
did interfere with the Rights of Man foundation upon which the Articles of Confederation stood (as the Constitution does), and the initial language was changed in the way that ended up enshrined in the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
If we got rid of state sovereignty, just imagine the benefits to the nation: one constitution, not 51. No Senate, or a more democratic upper body constituted much more equally. No Electoral College. The national government would run elections and the education system. All of the little petty tyrannies we see in state after state would be subject to national law.
Well, anyway, as I observe the champions of states rights completely rejecting the product of one of the most compelling laboratories of democracy, those are the directions my thoughts wander.