In the comments to Patterico’s post about Mike Rogers’ attempts to blackmail gay legislators to vote how he wants them to, a random comment caught my eye. A commenter calling himself “retire05″ said:

[Larry Craig] was elected to vote according to the will of his district, not his own personal views. And while there are many politicians who do believe as the voters who elected them, many do not.

Do we elect legislators to vote according to the will of the district? I always believed that we were voting for the person whose stances, combined, made them the most palatable candidate. Imagine the following scenario:

Candidate A believes that everything that’s bad for you in the slightest should be banned. He wants the government to strictly limit everyone’s diet and force everyone to go to the gym at least four days a week. Candidate B, on the other hand, believes that, while people should be encouraged to make healthy choices, it is more important that people are free to make their own choices and be happy.

Candidate B also believes, however, that all bathrooms should be unisex, while Candidate A thinks that whether a unisex bathroom or gender-restricted bathrooms are installed should be up to those who own the properties where that decision is going to be made.

95% of the population believes that they should be free to make their own decisions about their diet and exercise regimens, and they place that as one of the most important issues in this election. On the other hand, only 25% of the population believes that all bathrooms should be unisex, but they mostly believe that to be a minor issue.

Candidate B is elected.

Should Candidate B vote against the Unisex Bathroom Initiative? I don’t think so. If we were only interested in candidates who would vote according to the Will of the People, we would have replaced Senators and Representatives with computers that would simply vote according to the latest polls from inside their state/district as soon as the necessary technology for that became available. Instead, we elect people into those positions. Sometimes, we hold our noses and vote for someone who disagrees with us on many topics simply because they happen to be the candidate who agrees with us on the most important issues.

I think it’s much more important for a legislator to be a person of integrity, who is honest about his/her positions during the election season, than it is for a legislator to simply agree, mindlessly, with what The People say. Having legislators who listen too closely to the voice of the mob simply leads to mob rule, the fear of which was one of the major reasons we ended up with a Republic instead of a Democracy.