Author: Fritz Pettyjohn

I signed on as a volunteer in the Paul campaign.  All Fivers (Biddulph’s term) should pick a candidate and do likewise.  I hope to worm my way into a position where I can make a suggestion on political strategy.  You get one guess as to what my advice will be.

I will specifically suggest the Senator travel to Columbia, South Carolina to testify before the South Carolina legislature in support of our resolution.  I’ve read (somewhere on the internet, so you never know) that he testified in support before the Kentucky Senate, so this isn’t anything new.  I would also suggest he make a side trip to Charleston to meet with Republican leaders there, including John Steinberger, Chairman of the Charleston County GOP, and a serious player in SC Republican politics.  John and his wife told me they were mightily impressed with their extended talk with Ted Cruz.  When I told them Cruz was not supporting us they were surprised.  I urged them to ask Cruz about that if they got the chance, and they agreed.

If this is taken seriously I’d go further and suggest day trips to Virginia and West Virginia to testify before those legislatures.  And if his travel plans permit, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to drop by Oklahoma City, Phoenix and Helena.  I could go on.

This all may come to naught, but it’s worth a try.  Paul is my choice, and I want him to win.  I strongly believe pushing Article V and the BBA is smart politically, and would help him.  And I’ll make a bold prediction that if he does this, his rivals will follow suit.  (The only down side is pissing off the Birch/Eagle Forum crowd.  If that idea scares you you’re not a serious person.)  If Pence, Kasich or Jindal runs there’s no doubt they would follow Paul’s lead on this.  Probably Perry and Rubio as well.  I’m not a fan of Christie or Bush, but if they want to jump in, the water’s fine.

Cruz is the only one that might balk.  When he took on the establishment candidate in the Texas Senate primary he looked for help wherever he could get it, and my bet is that he got significant help from the Birch/Eaglers, and owes them.  To be honest, Cruz turns me off.  He’s smarmy, and too eager to show he’s the smartest guy in the room  — the fact that he probably is, is no excuse.  Ten years from now I might change my mind, but I don’t think his current demeanor works.

Thanks to Lou Marin and Loren Enns of IamAmerica we have a lot of grass roots support in South Carolina.  These are the kind of people who get involved in Presidential primaries.  The first candidate to champion Article V and the BBA will have a leg up getting their support.  And, of course, South Carolina comes right after New Hampshire on the 2016 calendar.

The thing is, Paul testifying in Columbia is newsworthy.  United States Senators don’t normally testify before state legislative committees.  For federalists, it is a proper sign of respect to the state legislatures who, under Article V, are the ultimate sovereigns in this country.  So this thing will get covered, maybe on Fox News.  90% of the audience would wonder, “WTF?  What is Article V, for God’s sake?”  And then they’d learn.  And they’d like it.

All Fivers, not just in the Task Force, should sign up for a Presidential campaign and try to promote the Article V BBA as an issue for their candidate.

As is typical, I get carried away.  But for Christ’s sake, Republicans have been yammering about how they want a BBA for forty years.  No one takes it seriously any more.  It’s a throwaway line in a stump speech.  But when only ten more states are needed, all of them with Republican majorities in both chambers, the idea of doing it through Article V isn’t some wild-eyed vision.  It could happen.

If Rand Paul grabs this ball and runs with it he’s the next President of the United States.

That would be Brent Mead of the Montana Policy Institute.  From what I’ve been able to learn, he appears to be a respected and connected player in Montana politics, particularly the legislature.  I don’t think he sits around thinking big thoughts.  He’s in the arena.

I’ve been worried about Montana.  If we come up short in North Dakota (highly unlikely) or Wyoming, we could try to get the Governor to call a special session in 2016.  But that’s not available in Montana, with a Democratic Governor.  And in those states we have huge, overwhelming majorities of R’s.  I think the Wyoming House is 51-9.  But there are a lot of Democrats in the Montana legislature, so we don’t have much margin for error.

I had a couple ideas about what to do in Montana.  Brent thinks he may have a better way.  I’m going to follow his lead.  He’ll be in the Capitol every day of the session, and has made a commitment to push our resolution.  I have no doubt he will, but it certainly won’t be his only project.  He’ll have other irons in the fire.  But the reason I’m much more optimistic is that I have something to offer him, of real value.  I’ll be making a deposit in the favor bank, and Brent will owe me one.  I think it will motivate him to put us at the very top of his list in the coming session.  And I believe he will deliver, if it is at all possible.

I haven’t been able to make contact with him the last few days, and that’s just fine with me, because I think I know why.  He’s up to his eyeballs working on the Republican Majority organizations, probably in cahoots with the new Speaker and Senate President.  All good.

A lot of chatter about where the wave came from.  I say it all started a year ago when people wised up to the Whopper — you can keep your health plan, keep your doctor.  Even the lowest information voter realized he’d been lied to.  Deliberately.  Repeatedly.  Knowingly.

Right then and there the D’s were toast.  And Obama’s a tar baby — they can’t get free of him.  For the next two years the leader of the Democratic Party will be a man no one believes, no one trusts.  And even when he leaves office they’re stuck with him.  He’ll be in his mid-50’s, and in excellent health.  He’s going to live forever, and you know damn well he won’t keep his mouth shut.  For blacks he’ll be a living icon, who can never be disrespected.  The D’s are married to the black vote, and thus to Barack Obama, for as long as he lives.

Live long and prosper, brother.

P.S.  Don’t worry about the Alaska Senate seat.  In tight races, where absentee and challenged ballots make the difference, R’s have a secret advantage — voter fraud.  When military guys (and there are thousands of them)  are rotated out of Alaska, they maintain their Alaska residence in order to keep getting Permanent Fund Dividends — about $1880 this year.  They all, every one of them, vote absentee to show their residence.  The only thing they care about in Alaska is the dividend — and Republicans were the creators and remain the defenders of the dividend (I had a hand in that).  Plus, Republicans are pro military, so we get 90% of their vote.  Democrats know about this, but don’t want to look anti-military.  Republicans?  Che sera, sera.  What will be, will be.

This is organization week in Legislatureland.  We’re interested only in the Republican Majority Caucuses in target states.  If you want to be Speaker or Senate President you round up a majority of votes within your caucus by promising committee chairmanships, membership on key committees (everybody wants to be where the money is, Finance or Appropriations) and various plums.

There are winners and losers.  You have to be careful not to totally piss off the losers for fear that they’ll bolt and form a majority coalition with the Democrats.  This has been common in Alaska for 30 years, though rare elsewhere.

We want Article V supporters as presiding officers in every target state.  Even that is no guarantee of passage, but it makes it a whole lot easier.

What we don’t want is Andy Biggs, the current President of the Arizona Senate, and, from what we hear, the heavy favorite as next Senate President.  His mother-in-law is the former Arizona chair of Eagle Forum, and, as a good and dutiful son-in-law he’s just as whacked out as she is.  Article V is the work of the devil, part of a vast conspiracy —  so vast that it included Ronald Reagan.

Last year we passed our bill in the Arizona House, and were pretty confident we had the votes in the Senate, but Biggs killed it.  Senate Presidents can do that.

What we’ve asked our Senate supporters to do (these guys like Biggs — he must have some redeeming qualities) is to condition their vote for Biggs as President on his promise not to kill our bill next year.  It’s not a lot to ask.  I know, I’ve been there.  Normally if there are the votes to pass a bill within the majority caucus, that bill comes to the floor.  If I had been in the Arizona Senate I would have raised holy hell about it.  Maybe they’re very mild mannered down there, I don’t know.

Biggs acted the bully, played tyrant.  He’s probably a guy you don’t want to cross.  But his one point of vulnerability is this week.  He’s got to get eight fellow members of his seventeen member caucus to vote for him.  He’ll be nice to them, at least until the votes are cast.  If we can get just one of those nine to say, “Andy, I love you, and you’ve got my vote, but I want a commitment you won’t kill an Article V bill.”

Biggs will say his duty to the inviolability of the Constitution, and his oath to defend it from the evils of Article V, prevent him from making that commitment.

Then what does our state senator do?

I know what I’d do.

That would be Senate President-elect Bill Cole of West Virginia.  Elected to the Senate in 2012 he was immediately made Minority Leader by the Republican Minority Caucus.  They were down by a 10 to 24 margin, with 17 seats up in 2014.  Of the 12 Democrats running, he had to take out seven to get even.  Beating entrenched incumbent majority State Senators is hard.  Unless they’ve screwed up, it’s really hard.  Taking out seven of twelve is ridiculously hard.

The hardest part is convincing people it can be done.  You’ve got to identify your targets, and recruit candidates.  Good candidates, that will raise money, run a good campaign, and make a very significant personal sacrifice.  Damn few people will do that — take on an incumbent State Senator — unless they’re convinced not only that they can win, but they can get in the majority, where you can actually accomplish something.  I know very little about Cole.  He’s a successful businessman who currently owns a car dealership.  Not a lot of political experience.  But he has got to be one hell of a salesman.

He’s also got to be a very smart guy, which bodes well for Article V.  Overington is unsure about his position on our resolution.  He may not have had a chance to make much of a pitch to him.  But since there is little doubt that we’ll have overwhelming Republican support in the Assembly —  Overington has close to majority of the Assembly as co-sponsors — I’m sure he will give it careful consideration when it comes to the Senate.  As long as he has an open mind, and a good one, we should get his support.

We get support from establishment Republicans and Tea Party Republicans, from middle of the road to hard right.  We really only lose to Birch/Eagle Forum Republicans, or legislators from districts which have a lot of these people in them.  I don’t think West Virginia has many of these people at all.

When I was House Minority Leader in Alaska in the mid-80’s, I tried to do what Senator Cole did.  It was hard, really hard.  I never came close.

In my opinion Senator Cole’s victory will be what puts us over the top.  In the worst case scenario, we only get to 34 with West Virginia.  Because of him, we won ‘t need a single Democrat in any of our target states.

I say it’s wise to expect the worst.  That way you won’t be disappointed.

I like people with balls.  The guys at 250 More get their name from their intention to promote reforms which will ensure another quarter of a millennium of American freedom.  Aim high, I say.

They’ve put out a constructive critique of the current Article V movement, and I’m responding on behalf of the Reagan Project, not the BBA Task Force.  That would require circulating drafts, doing edits, and such.

Their first point is cooperation between the various groups working on Article V.  No argument there.  The Task Force formally adopted, by unanimous vote, an “all of the above strategy.”  As Mao said, let a hundred flowers bloom.

Then they say we’ll need support from the center-left, especially to get to 38 for ratification.  But we believe the current House and Senate leadership, and a majority of the rank and file, will want us to succeed.  These guys want a BBA, and Article V is the only way.  So we won’t need 38 state legislatures to ratify, which might well be a bridge too far.  Congress will accede to our request that ratification take place in state conventions, where we’ll have a much easier time.  Even deep blue electorates, like Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois have some fiscal rectitude, as evidenced by Governors-elect, Hogan, Baker and Rauner.  When electing delegates to a ratifying convention voters will choose delegates who support, or oppose, ratification.  Period.  It’s a one issue vote.  Party labels won’t matter.  My reading of the current political landscape tells me we get 38 conventions.  Easily.

It’s slim pickings for Article V on the center/left.  With the defeat of Barrow in Georgia and Rahal in West Virginia, there isn’t an honest to God blue dog Democrat left in Congress, with the possible exception of Joe Manchin.  It’s a dying breed.  And in the short term, from now until the 2016 election, savvy Democrats realize putting the BBA into the national political conversation is political poison for them.  Please see my previous post on this blog.

An important exception is Congressional term limits through Article V.  That really can be totally bipartisan.  Aaron Cook is a Kansas City lawyer who has set up termlimitconvention.org.  In my view, it should be the second train through the Article V tunnel.  It’s got just as much public support as a BBA, and that support runs across the entire political spectrum, from hard right to hard left.  And, like the BBA, term limits is a movement and a moment in perfect harmony.   The only people who approve of Congress are those who aren’t paying attention. Hopefully Aaron will find help from the center/left.

They also say we need more youth involvement, and a legal team.  Amen to that.  We’re working on it.  The Task Force is dominated by septuagenarians.  As to lawyering up, my hope is that if and when that becomes necessary we would have enough credibility to get help from established conservative lawyers in public interest outfits like Judicial Watch.

Their most telling criticism is the almost complete lack of a media presence, and thus public awareness.  They’re trying in talk radio.  Limbaugh, Levin, Beck, Cain et. al.  Hasn’t really moved the needle.  Levin’s book did some good, but it’s off the radar.  Various articles have appeared on Article V, to little effect.  We’ll keep tooting our horn, and as we get to 27, then 28, 29, 30 — people will start to hear the tune.  To break through we’ll need money or, even better, Republican Presidential candidates who seize on this issue and make it their own.  We know we’re supported by Kasich, Paul, Snyder, Jindal, Pence, and Perry.  Cruz thinks he has to worry about all the Birch/Eagle Forum people that helped elect him in Texas.  I suspect he’ll figure it out, as will Walker.

As the 2014 election fades into a golden memory, political types across the country are going to get involved in various Presidential campaigns.  Anyone who does should try to promote the BBA through Article V as an issue their candidate should embrace.  It’s a no brainer, politically.  And if one of these guys start pushing it, the others will pile on.  It could be one thing that unites the field.  They should all support putting it in the platform at the convention.  Even if, God forbid, we don’t get to 34 by 2016, it could be one of the defining issues of the 206 Presidential election.

We’ve been a free country for 238 years.  250 More?

Hell, yes.