Gingrich, Huntsman, and Santorum Join Rick Perry's Fight Against the 10th Amendment in Virginia

Rick Perry has been a big 10th Amendment fan, until it bit him. The 10th Amendment says:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

That gives the states a lot of leeway to make and enforce their own rules, and the state of Virginia had done just that by requiring petitions with 10,000 signatures to get on the state's March 6 presidential primary ballot. Texan Rick Perry and several other candidates came up short of that mark.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell does not have much sympathy:

"Heck, I did it twice. It can't be that hard."

Virginia wants to keep the riffraff off its ballots by requiring signatures from a nominally large but statistically insignificant number of voters (only 0.125% of the 8 million residents). You may think that's too much work to put a candidate through, but you aren't Virginia.

Perry's beef is with the requirement that all petition circulators be an eligible or registered qualified voter in Virginia. That means as a Texan Rick Perry can't even solicit signatures for his own campaign. Nevertheless, it would seem rather obvious that he could recruit or hire one of the millions of qualified Virginians to accompany him on his petition-signing drive.

Rick Perry's counter argument seems to be that requiring him to associate with Virginians violates his rights under the U.S. Constitution. That may win in court (although I doubt it) but would not seem endearing to Virginia voters.

Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and Rick Santorum have been allowed to join the lawsuit. Gingrich lives in Virginia, so his failure to get the required number of signatures to be on the ballot is especially embarrassing even without the challenge to the 10th Amendment.

The great irony of this lawsuit is that the state of Virginia (along with other states and with the supposed support of Perry, Gingrich, and Santorum) is simultaneously fighting Obamacare on the grounds that the 10th Amendment means the individual states and not the federal government get to set the requirements for health care coverage.

The 10th Amendment is good for thee but not for me they say.