The inflection point, the moment things really started to turn around, was in October of 2013. That’s when Obamacare was introduced to the American people. Politically, it was catastrophic for the Democrats. A policy they’d been pushing since Truman actually went into effect and began to impact people’s lives. And people were pissed. They’d been told, repeatedly, that if they liked their health insurance, they could keep it. But that was always a lie,
When I saw all this happen, I decided to get back into politics after a 13 break. I figured things were going turn to around, and a lot of things might be possible. A red wave was coming, maybe big enough to enact an Article V amendment!
I was 68 years old, but figured I still had some gas left in the tank. I started a blog at ReaganProject.com, and did an internet search for an Article V movement. Any Article V movement. I found the Convention of States project (CoS), called them up, and they explained their proposal.
I told them that it would never work. You don’t combine three controversial proposals into one package and try to pass them all at one fell swoop. Politics doesn’t work that way. There are different majorities for all three ideas, but they don’t correspond to each other. This isn’t the way majorities are assembled.
So I did a little research, and found out Lew Uhler, an 80-year-old Reagan veteran in Sacramento, was still pushing a balanced budget amendment. I’d last seen Lew in Orlando at an ALEC meeting 24 years earlier, when I was in the Alaska legislature, and was pushing a term limits amendment. Here Lew was, still growing strong.
He had Mark Meckler, the head of CoS, along with his wife, over to his office. They lived just up the road in the foothills. Lew asked him to explain where he came up with the three ideas, (balanced budget, term limits, and cutting back the federal government). Meckler said he just asked the people who came to his Tea Party events, and these were the most popular ideas.
This is a stupid and sloppy way to put together a political initiative. It’s not how you draft a proposal that you try to pass in a state legislature. But it’s a good way to raise money, and that was Meckler’s principal goal. He’d learned how to raise money online for the Tea Party Patriots, which he co-founded. Naturally enough, Meckler has found his three-headed idea a tough sell. He’s raised and spent a fortune (taking a nice bite out for himself, thank you very much) to get around half the states he needs. These are the low hanging fruit, and he has little hope of getting any further.
It’s a waste of money, but it’s worse than that. Meckler actively seeks to undermine and destroy any rival Article V organization. He’s a snake. Other proposals are a threat to his. His whole operation is kept going so that Meckler can continue in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.
But things are about to change, fairly quickly. Meckler’s scam will soon be exposed, and he’ll need to find another line of work.
I’ve been at this a long time (since 1983, actually), and I’ve never felt better about our chances. The wave hasn’t crested. An Article V Convention will be called. And I will live to see it.
reaganproject.blog 