The Convention of States ain’t your momma’s revolution. Recently, we officially “made it” in the cool department when we were featured on MTV:
Over the next few months, you will probably start hearing about an “Article V” convention, or a “Convention of States,” or a “constitutional convention” — a discussion bubbling up from the depths of the deplore-o-sphere, where all the nation’s worst ideas come from.
We have not had a constitutional convention of any sort since 1787, a date of sufficient distance relative to our short-lived country that the idea might seem too far-fetched to even flag for criticism. The Framers’ lack of attention to detail on the matter suggests that even they didn’t take the possibility of it happening very seriously.
Even a couple of years ago, the prospect of a constitutional convention seemed the stuff of Alex Jones monologues (Jones has, of course, endorsed the idea). But these days, Jones’s network has a White House press pass and the ear of the president himself. We are so far on the other side of the looking glass that improbable events might be closer than they appear.
This convention is essentially a push to reconsider the fundamentals of the nation’s founding document. The proposal for it is supported by the same matrix of power and money that inflated the tea party into a national force. It’s not even a different version of the tea party coalition. The Convention of States movement features the exact same cast of characters: the Koch brothers, Glenn Beck, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and — as of this week — Jim DeMint, former South Carolina senator and recent head of the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation. He was forced out at The Heritage Foundation because its board thought he was too focused on electoral politics and not serious enough about conservative ideas or policy.
That might tell you all you need to know about the idea: Whatever it is, it’s not about conservatism. An Article V convention would be a means to an end. What end? Well, DeMint explained his decision to join the Convention of States campaign with laudable transparency: “The Tea Party needs a new mission. They realize that all the work they did in 2010 has not resulted in all the things they hoped for.”
A convention of states would be an end run around Donald Trump’s legislative incompetence, but it’s born from the same impulse that elected him: the fracturing of political norms and a desire to shore up white supremacy by any means necessary.
Wait, what? White supremacy? That will certainly come a surprise to some of our black endorsers, like Colonel Allen West, Sheriff David Clarke, or Stacey Dash. No one tell that to Bobby Jindal, the first Indian American governor elected in our nation’s history, who’s also a proud COS supporter. In fact, I could list even more minorities who support the COS, but MTV isn’t interested in facts. They’ve always been interested in just sensationalism, so there’s no reason to act like they’re anything but inaccurate.
And speaking of inaccurate, I should rephrase my initial statement. The Convention of States Project, come to think of it, is your momma’s revolution. And your dad’s and your’s. We represent Americans from all walks of life — of all ethnicities and all ages — who are sick and tired of the way things are done in Washington, DC.
Hey, if you like your MTV, you can keep it. But if you’re fed up with the government’s incompetence, you can be a real rebel and help us fight back.
