After November

Why kid ourselves? There is something seriously wrong with our government. Some of us may choose to ignore it, others may wish it would go away, but we all, at least on some subconscious level, see it in dozens of ways: persistent high unemployment, government spending through the roof, a health care system made worse by "reform", two thousand miles of southern border left wide open, taxes set to explode next January 1, vote buying at the highest levels of the Administration, terrorist states building nuclear weapons, and an oil leak that has been a Charley-Foxtrot of mismanagement from Day One...on and on...

Behind all of this, down in the pit of our stomachs, is the gnawing feeling that many, even a majority, of those we've sent to Washington have no interest in looking out for the country's best interests. What ever particular star in the east they are following, it isn't ours.

But, a large segment of the population is not taking this bad situation quietly. An epidemic of November Fever has broken out. Brought back from near death by the infusion of energy from revved up Tea Party activists, Libertarians and political first timers, the Republican Party stands a real chance of getting control of at least some part of the government. We know it and the Left knows it.

I’ve been asked WHY I’d vote for Sarah Palin.

It’s not because she’s a genius or her qualifications from being a governor, it’s because she’s an American.

She’ll close the borders.

She’ll send the illegal aliens home.

She’ll salute the flag

She won’t bow to a foreign leader especially those closely aligned to MUSLIM interests

She won’t be admired by dictators in Iran and Venezuela

She’ll do what I would do most of the time.

She’ll do what Regan would have done.

There’s lots of people like Sarah Palin and me but the garbage like Lyndsey Graham, John McCain and an outright traitor like Barack Obama that have to go.

It is time to take out the trash.

I’m with you 100%. It doesn’t take a genius to see what needs to be done. We need to cut red tape at all levels in government regulation (for example they turned away all the skimmers in the Gulf because they collected only 99 percent of the oil but some was left in the water). Pure insanity. We have to cut spending or we will have an unsustainable debt. I personally trust Palin, in part because she took on oil in Alaska; she showed that she will fight for what’s right even if it’s hard. I even like that she stepped down as governor . . . it shows she will swing for the home run even if everyone else thinks it’s risky (and it seems to have paid off as well . . . so she looks to me like a winner). Anyway . . .

The article you posted gets it right as well. I was bitterly disappointed in the Bush years. I actually believed that the Republican Congressmen were like me . . . that they had waited a lifetime for a Republican President and Congress, together, so they could change some of the big things that were wrong, and all the gnawing little things that were clearly biased to the socialists and Democrats.

Instead the Republicans were milquetoast at best. They didn’t even defund the left . . . didn’t even get rid of money streaming to their party’s enemies; those funds enriching and employing the left while it was out of political power and allowing it to grow as it waited in the wings. We need a new wave of politicians desperately. Another class of 1994 (or even 1974 . . . but in reverse). Ones who will reform the secondary schools and take them from the libs. Ones who will defund the left even to the point of stopping the nonsense government funding of nonsense left wing universities. Etc.

Real aggressive, no BS, Americans in office. Not career politicians.

I have become convinced that the three branches of government, and the two political parties, are no longer in control of the government.

It has taken on a momentum of its own, and this momentum is in a very bad direction. And the federal government cannot stop itself.

And the people cannot change the government enough to stop it. This is proven by the overwhelming Republican majority during W. Bush, and the overwhelming Democrat majority during Obama.

Neither party could do anything to stop the avalanche.

However, when our constitution was written, it was *assumed* that this situation would eventually happen, and a contingency plan was carefully crafted to deal with it.

It is a constitutional convention of the individual States. And on its own, with little prodding, we are moving in that direction. Right now, States are forming blocs against some of the more obnoxious federal overreaching. While topical in nature, these blocs are all based on the same premise: that the power of the federal government has grown far too much, and at the expense of the States.

Since the start of the 20th Century, a meme was taught in the public schools that a constitutional convention would be “unthinkable. It would be controlled by radicals.” This is not true. In fact, just the opposite is true.

34 States would have to agree with each other even to call a constitutional convention, and 38 States would have to agree to any changes made to our constitution. And the *only* issue that this many States could agree to is that the federal government is too large and powerful, and that its size and power need to be reduced.

This is not radical in any way.

There are many proposals about how to change the constitution to bring this about, and none of these proposals are either radical, or would be out of place on this forum.

But the bottom line is that the *most* we can hope for, from our elected and appointed federal government, at this time, is for them to either back off, and allow the States to convene a convention; or to actively encourage them in this.

In human terms, a constitutional convention is a very republican democracy event.

To run our federal government, there are 435 voting congressmen, 100 senators, 9 justices on the Supreme Court and 1 president. A total of 545 people.

But our State legislatures have 7,382 legislators, and there are 50 State governors, for a total of 7,432 people. All of whom would have a say in drafting and voting for a new US constitution.

In addition none of these 7,432 people are federal elected officials, so they are not “part of the problem”. And oddly enough, this is why they are willing to do this, at the State level, in a *bipartisan* manner.

Republican and Democrat alike, at the State level, more and more they as seeing, as Ronald Reagan said, that “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.”

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