The Eagle Forum is very active against this issue. Here is an email I received today from a former state chair:
Eagle Forum, formed by our national leader Phyllis Schlafly, has been leading the pro-family movement with strength and decisiveness since 1972.
Is this email not displaying correctly?
View it in your browser.
Is this email not displaying correctly?
View it in your browser.
May 25 STOP Con Con ALERT
Please call your Senator and ask him to OPPOSE HJR 77. Find your Senator: http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/Home.aspx ***OR*** Call the Capitol switchboard: 512-463-4630
The problem is not the Constitution. An Article V Convention would be reckless, and immense harm would result from its risk-it-all approach. Earlier this month, conservative Justice Scalia publicly declared that an Article V Convention is a “horrible idea.”
A vote for an Article V convention would be, in effect, a vote against the Constitution, which has preserved our freedoms and promoted our prosperity for more than two centuries. We need to be defending and applying the Constitution, not engaging in pie-in-the-sky talk about changing it.
At least three disasters would result from an Article V Convention. First, liberals would insert into the Constitution a right to unlimited, taxpayer-funded abortion. That would invalidate the good pro-life laws in Texas. Second, liberals would repeal the Second Amendment, ending the right to bear arms. That would repeal the good pro-gun laws in Texas. Third, liberals would insert same-sex marriage and the full homosexual agenda into the 14th Amendment, conferring the ultimate constitutional status currently held by race. That would end tax-exemptions for churches and thoroughly destroy Christian schools and businesses in Texas.
Congress, not the states, has the exclusive power to establish the procedures for an Article V Convention and even pick its delegates. This is because Article V expressly states that Congress, and only Congress, “shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments.” The “call” would include the time, place, composition, and procedure. If any state disputes this, then the U.S. Supreme Court stands by to rule in favor of federal power, as it almost always does in every other case brought before it.
No call for a constitutional convention can limit its purpose. The attempt by H.J.R. 77 to restrict its call to “the limited purpose of proposing one or more amendments to the constitution to impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and to limit the terms of office of federal officials and members of Congress” is without any effect whatsoever. As Chief Justice Warren Burger said in a letter to me dated June 22, 1988:
I have also repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey. After a Convention is convened, it will be too late to stop the convention if we don’t like its agenda. The meeting in 1787 ignored the limit placed by the Confederation Congress “for the sole and express purpose.” (http://www.eagleforum.org/topics/concon/pdf/WarrenBurger-letter.pdf)
The enormous influence of the liberal media today makes it impossible to duplicate the success of the original Constitutional Convention. An essential requirement of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was total secrecy from the media and the negative influence it would have on deliberations. At the end of the Constitutional Convention, the media did not even know what kind of government the Framers proposed. Benjamin Franklin famously responded to the question by saying, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” He and all the Framers knew that there would be harmful pressure against what they created in the Constitution. But as admitted by a leader of the Constitution of States, the liberal media would have access to, and thus influence over the proposed Article V Convention. Indeed, the Article V Convention proponents probably seek the attention and power, but that media circus will ensure liberal pressure and a liberal result.
It is a false promise for proponents of an Article V Convention to claim that states would not necessarily ratify the proposals of the convention. The media pressure would be unstoppable to ratify what an Article V Convention proposes. For example, state legislatures opposed ratification of the 17th Amendment, but once it was enacted by Congress then the pressure was too intense for states to resist, and many of them ratified the 17th Amendment by unanimous vote. In practice it would be impossible to stop ratification of the many bad changes that an Article V Convention would propose.
George Washington stated, “The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.” Daniel Webster, one of the greatest American statesmen of the 19th century, who was a delegate to the Massachusetts State constitutional convention in 1820, declared, “Hold on my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands, Miracles do not cluster and what happened once in 6,000 years may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution!” James Madison observed, “Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention which assembled under every propitious circumstance, I should tremble for the result of a Second, meeting in the present temper of America, and under all the disadvantages I have mentioned.”
In sum, do not be fooled by the gimmick of a Con Con. Endorsement of an Article V Convention is tantamount to flying to Las Vegas in search of a solution to a financial problem. The approach is wrong, dangerous, and certain to make things far worse.
Vote for our Constitution by voting “no” on H.J.R. 77.
I don’t expect anybody to wade through the above. My point is that the Texas Eagle Forum is considered a conservative group. Not everybody, even on our side, is convinced a con-con will work.
In the case of Texas, Joe Straus would most likely have the largest say in the delegates chosen. The advocates for an Art V Con will not get the changes they desire if Straus has the kind of input he will surely have on delegate selection. If Texas won’t send delegates committed to Liberty Amendments, which state will?
The email above came from Cathie Adams. I thought that was in the body of the email as well...