You've probably heard by now that Hillary Clinton has gone on the warpath against the Convention of States movement (you can listen to her uninformed statements here and here).
What you may not know is that Clinton is participating in a tradition that goes back decades. The political establishment in D.C. has always sought to maintain the status quo, which makes them terrified whenever the Article V movement begins to gain steam.
Rob Natelson exposed this establishment conspiracy in a fascinating article, "The Liberal Establishment's Disinformation Campaign Against Article V." We've published an excerpt below:
During the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, establishment liberals were pleased with the growth of the federal government and the activist Supreme Court. They wanted no corrective amendments. Rather, they felt threatened by conservative and moderate efforts to use the convention process. Liberals developed, therefore, a campaign to effectively disable it.
Their project was highly successful. It not only gained traction among liberals, but it pitted conservatives against conservatives by persuading many of them to abandon one of the Constitution’s most important checks on federal overreaching. The campaign resulted in the defeat of every effort to propose amendments to reform or restrain the federal government. Its psychological and political force continued unabated for decades.11
The story begins in 1951. Faced with a conservative drive to repeal the 16th Amendment, liberal U.S. Rep. Wright Patman (D.-Tex.) attacked it as “fascist” and “reactionary.” He added the unsupported assertion that a convention for proposing amendments could not be limited—that it could “rewrite the whole Constitution.”12 The obvious goal behind that statement was to scare people into thinking that the convention, instead of focusing on a single amendment, might effectively stage a coup d’état.
A more coordinated campaign against Article V began in 1963, with an article in the Yale Law Journal. It was authored by a law professor named Charles Black, also of Yale, a zealous defender of liberal causes and of the activism of the Supreme Court, then led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The occasion for Black’s article was the amendment proposal of the Council of State Governments. [...]
Somewhat later, Chief Justice Warren, whose judicial activism was one of the targets of the Council of State Governments, mimicked Black and Swindler by with the absurd declaration that its amendment drive “could soon destroy the foundations of the Constitution.”17
When Senator Everett Dirksen (R.- Ill.) joined the fight for an amendment partially reversing the Warren Court’s reapportionment cases, his liberal colleagues pushed back hard. Senators Joseph Tydings (D.-Md) and Robert Kennedy (D.-NY) followed Black’s lead and advanced various “reasons” why Congress should disregard state legislative resolutions it did not care for.18 Senator William Proxmire (D.-Wis.) and the liberal New York Republican, Senator Jacob Javits pressed the claim that a convention would be uncontrollable.19
As you can see, Clinton's fearmongering is nothing new -- but that doesn't make it right.
The fact is, the founders included the Convention of States option in Article V of the Constitution for exactly this moment in history. A Convention of States can propose constitutional amendments that limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government and return decision-making power to the states and the people.
But each of these amendment proposals must be approved by 38 states, which ensures that all new amendments have the broad support of the American people.
Clinton, like the establishment elites before her, is pleased with the growth of the federal government. She no doubt wants to continue that growth from the White House, and she's terrified the people might rise up and use the only constitutional means of limiting her power.
