Is the Constitution Ideological?

A front‐​page Washington Post article about the looming Virginia gubernatorial race between Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Friend of Bill Clinton Terry McAuliffe includes this point:

McAuliffe is known as “a dealmaker,” said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes gubernatorial races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and Cuccinelli “is far more ideological in a lot of ways.”


“I think [Cuccinelli] walks around with a copy of the Constitution, and McAuliffe doesn’t,” she said.

Really? The fact that the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia, home of James Madison, carries a copy of the Constitution makes him an ideologue?


Cuccinelli may well be strongly ideological, for better or worse. But surely carrying a copy of the Constitution in your pocket — get yours today from the Cato Institute — is not intrinsically ideological.


For more ideologues, such as the ones below, see this article.