The resounding rejection, by the Irish, of two constitutional amendments that would have redefined the family and stripped language in respect the place of woman being in the home is an affirmation of popular common sense. The first change was rejected by more than 67 percent of voters. The second was defeated by an astronomical 73.9 percent. That’s the highest such tally on record. The results are crushing blows to the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar.   

The measure of the rebuke was marked by Mr. Varadkar, who called the outcome “two whallops” and admitted “Clearly we got it wrong. While the old adage is that success has many fathers and failure is an orphan, I think when you lose by this kind of margin, there are a lot of people who got this wrong and I am certainly one of them.” It is a defeat not only for Mr. Varadkar’s Fine Gael party, but also for Sinn Féin and the country’s  political machers.  

The first proposed change would have described the family, “whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships, as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of society.” No doubt droves of Irish, to Cork from Donegal, puzzled over that infelicitous phrase “durable relationship.” What on earth does that mean? One need not be Archbishop McQuaid to reckon that such wishy-washy prose is hardly sound constitutional timber.

The second amendment would have replaced a reference to women’s “life within the home” with language recognising care within families more generally. The government apparently believed that the coincidence of the vote on International Women’s Day would push the proposal over the finish line. Instead  it flopped. The Financial Times reports that one voter, instead of marking “Yes” or “No,” wrote  “language too vague, please try again.”

Before the vote Mr. Varadkar hailed the referendum as an opportunity to delete “some very old-fashioned, very sexist language” from Ireland’s constitution, which was written in 1937. Yet voters — who in recent years have approved amendments to allow gay marriage and abortion —  appear to have seen it as a combination of force-feeding and overreach. Forty four percent of the Irish voted, meaning that this was no insignificant rump. 

The last thing the Irish would likely want to be told is that on Friday they echoed the sensibility of the Brits in backing Brexit. There is, though, something of that burst of resistance to overweening leaders in the outcome. In both cases, it appears that the people want to chart their own course against elite frippery. A constitution, after all, is the last place to meddle and pander. Restraint there is the better part of wisdom, at Dublin or D.C.