re: #79 dangerman

you “represent” your district or state. you *work* for everyone.

and dare i say you should act in the best interest of your constituents, placing their interests ahead of yours.

As that famed conservative icon Edmund Burke noted centuries ago.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Although I don’t know why he is considered ‘conservative’. His whole career in office was progressive from his opposition to slavery to support for the American Colonies.