Why LITD regards a Convention of States as an interesting idea, but not a brand to focus on with single-issue zeal

Marco Rubio has endorsed the CoS push.

I know a bit about it. In the course of engaging in some grassroots activism, I've come across folks who are quite involved in the formal organization going by that name. Good folks who share our side's general passion for doing whatever can be done to restore post-America to its former status as the United States of America.

But Allahpundit at Hot Air points up some considerations that have weighed on my mind for some time:

Help me with the math here. To call a convention, you need 34 states to agree; to ratify new amendments at that convention, you need 38 states. Mitt Romney won 24 states in 2012. Even in a best-case scenario in 2016 for the GOP, you’re probably looking at 20 solidly blue states, which means you’re four short of what you need to call the convention and eight short of what you need to actually get things passed. On the one hand, that daunting math should calm fears of liberals going nuts at a convention and repealing the Second Amendment, carving out exceptions to the First, and so on. Even if they can find 30 blue states to support that, they’d still need eight red ones to join them in order to enact the proposals. Not going to happen. The only ideas that stand a chance of passing are procedural reforms that enjoy broad bipartisan support, like term limits for Congress.

On the other hand, apart from term limits, how many other reforms enjoy such sweeping cross-partisan enthusiasm that blue states would not only agree to join a constitutional convention aimed at them but to help conservatives pass them? If you think the left is going to go for a balanced-budget amendment, I fear you’re kidding yourself. The BBA may poll well in the abstract, but wait until the media starts digging into it and Democrats start shrieking about conservatives’ “evil scheme” to destroy Medicare by capping federal expenditures at revenue levels. A balanced-budget amendment is about restraining the power of the federal government to grease special interests by spending beyond its means. Why on earth would the modern Democratic Party agree to something like that?

Either you’re going to have to severely lower expectations for a convention — term limits might be the only thing that passes — or you’re going to have to horse-trade with the left to get things on the agenda. For instance, you might suspect that blue states, under the hot spotlight of an Article V huddle, would be more reluctant to vote no on a BBA than they would under the traditional mechanism where Congress passes an amendment and then each state gets to quietly decide whether to ratify it or not. That, to me, is one of the great virtues of a convention over the traditional amendment process: The intense public attention means there’s nowhere to hide on extremely tough votes. (The other great virtue is that it removes Congress from the amendment process, making something like congressional term limits more viable.) But again, the left has some leverage here. If you want a vote on a BBA, which will probably fail anyway, they might insist on a vote on, say, a very limited exception to the First Amendment to cap the amount of money individuals can legally donate to candidates and their Super PACs. That’d be a tough vote for some red states given the brisk business Trump has done this year attacking the competition as bought-and-sold puppets of the donor class. Are you willing to risk a carve out to the First Amendment for a shot at passing a balanced-budget amendment? If not, how do you get Democrats to the table on the latter without coming to the table yourself on the former?

And if it’s true that the only thing (or one of the very few things) that can pass at a constitutional convention is term limits for Congress, why not focus right now on trying to get that passed through the traditional amendment process? Congress might resist, but given the mood in the country towards D.C. and the specter of populist demagogues like Trump growing in power if reforms aren’t enacted, they might not resist as vigorously as everyone expects. 

In sum, there's only so many things a CoS could really do in the service of the massive task before us.

And, of course, culture is upstream from politics. Even if, either through a C-S or more direct Congressional action, term limits is achieved, we still have militant transgendered-rights jackboots and BLM stormtroopers destroying our educational system, we still have the death of music and literature, we still have windmills subsidies and we are still under constant threat from jihad, of both the Sunni and Shiite variety.

So, big picture, folks. No one front in this war for America's soul is going to bring victory once and for all.

Well, maybe if we were all to earnestly turn toward Him. Anybody up for that?