**Previously recorded by Phyllis Schlafly // April 2011 **
Several state legislatures are considering resolutions to use a never-before-used power in our Constitution’s Article V to petition Congress to call a new national convention to amend the U.S. Constitution. Most of these resolutions say they want the convention to consider only the one amendment that state is pushing.
However, various state resolutions are supporting different Amendments! Some specify that the one Amendment to be considered must be the Repeal Amendment (to allow states to repeal an act of Congress), others want the one Amendment to be Debt Limitation, others want a Balanced Budget Amendment, some want to banish the Electoral College, others want to abolish the 17th Amendment, and one proposal is for ten Amendments.
You can be sure that many special-interest groups will also be pushing their own agendas. You can bet that a Convention will attract activists demanding union rights, gay rights, gun control, abortion rights, ERA, and D.C. Statehood.
Calling a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution would be a plunge into chaos because nobody can predict what the convention would actually do. Anyone who has ever attended a national political convention knows very well that the guy with the gavel exercises ruthless power. I’ve attended 15 Republican National Conventions plus many other national, state and district political conventions, and I’ve seen every kind of high-handed tactic and rule broken with the bang of the gavel, including cutting off mikes, recognizing only pre-chosen delegates, expelling duly elected delegates they don’t want, cheating on credentials and rules, fixing the voting machines, and having big strong thugs patrol the aisles to prevent delegates from getting out of their seats and converse with other delegations.
A Constitutional Convention is a bad bet. It would plunge our country into chaos and endanger the Constitution. There are better and safer ways to go about getting the goals that we want, without opening the door for our opponents to enshrine their radical policies in our Constitution.
