Conservatives are supposed to be, well, conservative. They’re not supposed to be radicals eager to tear down structures that have served this country well for more than two centuries.
Likewise, self-proclaimed “constitutional conservatives” are supposed to be particularly reverential toward the U.S. Constitution, to the point that they carry pocket-sized versions of the document to be whipped out whenever a need arises or a crowd is available to witness the event.
Yet in the name of defending the Constitution, supposed conservatives in the Georgia Senate are proposing to throw out the Constitution. Senate Resolution 736, approved Tuesday in the Senate by a vote of 37-16, calls for a constitutional convention that would be empowered to set aside the work of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and start all over again.
The resolution was co-sponsored by the entire GOP Senate leadership, including Senate President David Shafer, Senate Majority Leader Ronnie Chance, Senate Majority Whip Cecil Staton and GOP Caucus Chair Butch Miller.
According to the resolution, the constitutional convention would be empowered to propose “amendments to the United States Constitution that impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office for its officials and for members of Congress.”
While those parameters may sound mundane, they are broad enough to permit all kinds of mischief. And in reality, the words are meaningless. Legal experts have long concluded that if a convention is ever called under Article V of the Constitution, it would have the power to propose anything it wanted — a rewrite of the Bill of Rights, the abolition of the Supreme Court — anything.
Under that never-used Article V, a convention would be mandatory upon the call of at least two-thirds of the states. Pushed by tea-party groups and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, similar resolutions are moving or have already passed in Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, Alabama and a number of other states. (Anything the convention proposed would have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states, which is a reassuring last-ditch safeguard.)
Let’s talk a little bit about the motivation behind the convention call. According to SR 736, the Constitution makes state legislators the “guardians of liberty against future abuses of power by the federal government,” and “it is the solemn duty of the states to protect the liberty of our people.” And the primary goal of the constitutional convention would be to reassert state control over the federal government.
That balance between the states and the federal government is a long-running debate in American history, and in modern conservative thought it leads to interesting places. For example, more and more conservatives now fancy the idea of repealing the 17th Amendment, which gave voters the right to elect U.S. senators directly. They believe that by returning to the previous system of letting state legislatures appoint senators, they would restore state authority over Washington.
But the truth is, we used to have a government much like the one that modern conservatives would like to create. Under the Articles of Confederation, states had a great deal of autonomy from the federal government, and in the experience of our Founding Fathers during the eight years in which it was in effect, it was a disaster.
George Washington believed it was a major mistake “to suppose that the general concern of this Country can be directed by thirteen heads, or one head without competent powers.” Alexander Hamilton warned of “an excess of the spirit of liberty, which has made the particular states show a jealousy of all power not in their own hands.” James Madison, the main author of the Constitution, was a particularly harsh critic of giving states power over the federal government, and strongly backed a strong central government.
And of course, when Madison and his friends met in convention in 1787 to merely “amend” the Articles of Confederation, they instead threw the whole thing out. I’m in no hurry to see his handiwork revisited by the statesmen of today.
