Defeat Term Limits and Con-Con Calls in 2010!

by Larry Greenley, Director of Marketing

This is like déjà vu all over again.
                                       — Yogi Berra

As we enter the pivotal congressional election year of 2010, Yankee hall-of-famer Yogi Berra’s classic observation is so appropriate. We have seen this situation before. Back in the mid-1990s many Americans were awakening to the threat to our freedom and prosperity posed by President Clinton’s liberal agenda, which resulted in the “Republican Revolution” of 1994 in which Republicans won control of both the House and Senate. It was then  that we began hearing about term limits as a solution to our nation’s problems.

At the time, the JBS took a strong stand against term limits for Congress based on the obvious drawbacks of term limits, such as: (1) forcing sound constitutionalists from office based solely on number of terms served, not unfaithfulness to the Constitution; (2) converting all congressmen who would be serving their last term under term limits into “lame duck” officeholders; and (3) diverting attention away from the real need for creating an informed electorate. However, back in the 1990s the term limits movement was being used to bring about an even more serious threat, a constitutional convention (Con-Con), through which the Constitution itself could be destroyed.

The connection between term limits and a Con-Con is this: Term limits advocates generally favor a constitutional amendment to ensure that members of Congress would be strictly limited in the numbers of terms they could serve. However, amendments can be added to the Constitution in only two ways according to Article V. Either Congress must propose an amendment by a two-thirds vote and submit it to the states for ratification (three-fourths required for ratification). Or, two-thirds of the state legislatures must petition Congress to call a Con-Con where amendments would be proposed. Once again, three-fourths of the states would need to ratify any of these proposed amendments. Since Congress has not approved a term limits amendment and doesn’t seem likely to do so anytime soon, term limits amendment backers naturally shift their attention away from Congress and toward getting a constitutional convention convened by working with state legislatures.

Here’s how this “Term Limits Gambit” was characterized in the Foreword to the JBS Bulletin for June 1996:

The term limits movement is calculated to sweep the nation into a con-con with scarcely a hint of opposition. The game plan has been designed to make the American people feel like victims of unfair treatment and to make the organizers look like frustrated patriots trying to bring about a more responsible Congress.

That was 1996. However, our situation in 2010 is eerily similar. We have millions of Americans awakening in alarm over the threat to our freedom and prosperity posed by the liberal agenda of President Obama and congressional leaders. Another similarity to 1996 is that some of the individual leaders and organizations that were pushing for a Con-Con with a term limits amendment as bait in 1996 are now resurfacing as “grassroots” activists and organizations in the thick of the tea party movement in 2010.

As our CEO, Art Thompson, pointed out in the Foreword to this Bulletin, “term limits” and “a constitutional convention” are two prominent examples of false solutions being offered to the millions of newly awakened conservatives/constitutionalists among us. Given the millions of new people in the movement who have no memory of the downsides of term limits and a Con-Con, given the great appeal that the term limits issue has for both new and existing activists, and given the deep pockets of the organizations that promoted term limits and a Con-Con in the 1990s and that are still active in 2010, you can see that the Con-Con threat to the Constitution in 2010 is very real.

Since term limits proponents must bring about a constitutional amendment to achieve their objective, and since Congress is not likely to initiate such an amendment, therefore the term limits proponents will be focusing on bringing about a term limits amendment via a constitutional convention. Which means that we must win the fight to preserve the Constitution by preventing the calling of a constitutional convention. This battle will be fought on a state-by-state basis in the state legislatures. Our members and allies have been successful in preventing a Con-Con for the past 25 years, so we have a lot of assets in the coming battles.

Nonetheless, in order to preserve the Constitution this time around, we’ll need a large influx of members and allies to work on this project. To get involved contact the JBS Coordinator for your area, or you can contact me online by joining the “JBS.org Freedom Campaign - National” group on our JBS.org website at http://www.jbs.org/jbs-community/groups/viewgroup/37.

For an up-to-date listing of campaign tools for preventing a Con-Con call in your state, go to the “No Con-Con” section of the JBS.org Freedom Campaign at http://www.jbs.org/action/campaign-tools/4455. Three of the main tools are our Beware of Article V video (available both free to view online and as a DVD), the reprint of “Dangers of a Constitutional Convention” from the July 6, 2009 issue of The New American magazine, and “Term Limits Temptation,” a powerful rebuttal to the term limits movement from the June 10, 1996 issue of The New American. We’ve also added a pre-written, editable email message to our “Legislative Action” page (see under the “Action” menu tab at JBS.org) so that every American can send an email against convening a Con-Con to both of his state legislators.

ACTION SUMMARY

• Get involved in preventing any Con-Con call in your state: educate your state representatives about the issue, actively work to defeat any Con-Con resolutions that might be introduced in your state legislature, and, where appropriate, proactively work with your state legislators to pass a resolution to rescind all previous Con-Con calls by your state.
• Contact your JBS Coordinator and/or join the “JBS.org Freedom Campaign - National” group (see online address above) to learn how to get involved with other members and allies to stop any Con-Con calls in your state.