Is There Another Way?

Maybe.

Some of you know a great deal more about this subject that I do, but I’ll give it a try using this article from the American Thinker:

Regardless of the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, our republic needs a powerful redress against the unconstitutional usurpation of power by the federal government, particularly by the Supreme Court and President. Restoring federalism is the answer to every significant problem in our republic because federalism produces the marketplace of governments that rewards states with honest, efficient, and unobtrusive public administrations while allowing wealth and voters the option of leaving leftist nanny states.

Federalism is mostly honored in the breach these days. But could the founders’ concept of limited government be restored?

While Republicans at the federal level ought to embrace this agenda, the narcotic of federal government power and [monetary] printing presses makes it hard for any national party in Washington to actually fight Washington. The answer is to enact constitutional amendments that structurally change the balance of power between state governments and the federal government.

State legislatures on their own have the power to make these changes because, although no amendment to the US Constitution can be enacted without the consent of three-quarters of the state legislatures, these very states can, on their own, both propose and ratify constitutional amendments.

Here the author refers to the Article V process wherein the Constitution can be amended either at the initiative of Congress or through a convention of the states. In either case ratification of amendments is the purview of the states.

Convening a constitutional convention would require 34 state legislatures, or two-thirds of the states. Republican state legislatures, if they wished to convene a convention, would be close to that right now, since there are 31 state legislatures that have both chambers controlled by Republicans (I count unicameral Nebraska in that total). We are 3 short of the number required to convene a convention.

The 2018 midterm elections could change that if there is the sort of Republican victory that took place in 2010 and 2014. A total of 7 states – Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Washington – currently have GOP control of one chamber and close to a majority in the opposite chamber…

Put another way, there are 7383 state legislative seats in America. A shift of 31 seats, or less than one-half of 1% of seats, could give Republicans in state legislatures the power to convene a constitutional convention and to ratify amendments proposed at that convention…

This assumes no backsliding in favor of Democrats at the state legislature level in 2016, and it assumes that Republican-controlled legislatures would all support a constitutional convention. Both are possible. Neither is a given.

Currently, 29 states are on record as supporting a new constitutional convention.

As to the agenda for such a conclave…

The amendments proposed ought to narrowly focus on the imbalance of state and federal power. One advantage to this approach is that all state legislators would find some appeal in such amendments…

What amendments?

First, restore the state legislatures the power to elect members of the US Senate and add a power for state legislatures to recall a Senator during the term of office.

What’s being proposed here is the repeal of the 17th Amendment, returning the process for selecting US Senators to what it was prior to 1913.

As to the concept of recall, we have that here in Colorado. It was exercised with great success (and satisfaction) after Democrats in the state legislature flouted the will of the people by passing Obamaite gun control laws a few years ago.

Overall this proposed amendment would make the US Senate more accountable to the states rather than, as it is now, primarily a creature of the national political parties.

Second, provide that a resolution by three-fifths of the state legislatures of the several states could invalidate any federal judicial, legislative, or executive action, and could remove any federal official responsible for that action from office.

This is what is known as “nullification,” a concept which has a long history going back to at least Andrew Jackson’s time. The twist here is that, rather than granting individual states the power to nullify federal actions they don’t like, this proposed amendment would give that authority to the states acting in concert. This more consistent with the concepts of “one people, united” and “one nation, indivisible.”

The part about “remove any federal official” would give new life to the moribund (at the DC level) mechanism of impeachment.

Third, limit the terms of all federal judges to ten years.

Obviously this would make the judiciary more responsive to the people acting through their elected legislative representatives.

These would be reasonable, clear, and vital changes – and these amendments would be revolutionary. Americans, by the time of the 2018 midterm elections, may well be ready for this sort of peaceful and constitutional revolution.

We might be.

A constitutional convention has the virtue of providing an end-around to the unsatisfactory presidential nomination process and the increasingly rigged presidential election process. It’s an end-around of the Washington establishment as a whole. By restoring federalism we would give the states much more scope for going their own ways (for better or for worse) while also ensuring greater accountability of the government to the people. You know, like in a republic.

Near as I can tell, a lot of the going-in energy toward convening a constitutional convention was aimed at passing a federal balanced budget amendment. Obviously that’s not what is being suggested above. Good thing, since California already has a balanced budget requirement and it hasn’t stopped that state’s legislators from spending themselves silly. Where there’s a will (and Democrats in the majority) there’s a way.

Note that the American Thinker piece refers several times to “Republicans” carrying this concept forward. That’s because it is poison to Democrats. Any serious move in this direction will draw the full power of the clerisy in opposition. They will fight tooth and nail, employing shrill propaganda with a heavy larding of outright lies. That, and any sort of chicanery they think they can get away with.

It takes three-fourths of the states to ratify a constitutional amendment. That leaves plenty of scope for Democrat-controlled states to kill or water down any serious reform. It’s really very hard to change our Constitution, and purposely so.

With regard to federalism, I need to point out that the 10th Amendment already covers that base:

“The powers not designated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

So why is the federal leviathan so dominant relative to the states? In a word, money. The states have been systematically bribed with, then cowed by the threatened taking away of federal dollars. This is the strongest lever held by Washington. I don’t see that changing.

You could argue that we already have a good Constitution, perfectly sufficient to our present times. What has gone wrong is that the US Constitution has been incrementally ignored and thus grossly perverted.

A constitutional convention would represent big-time bucking of the trend we are now seeing toward ever bigger and ever less accountable government. Some might say that we have the government we deserve right now. That we the people want to be ruled and not govern ourselves. That we want to be promised free stuff – all sorts of wonderful things – and are content when given trash. If anything, the current trend is toward a de facto Soviet-style constitution wherein all things are promised and what’s actually given comes as a gift from the ruling class. Furthermore, we’ve internalized low expectations for governance. To have a republic you have to have a republican mindset. Do we? Or more precisely, do three-fourths of the state legislatures?

Dunno. Still, this is worth a spin. Count me as a supporter.

Copyright 2016 Tacitus
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