GOP Amnesty: The Final Last Straw

By J.T. Hatter
The Republican Party is pushing immigration reform, and the GOP's new apparent political adviser, Chuck Schumer, gleefully approves.  Next, the Democrat senator will be advising the party on gun control, government spending, abortion and homosexual marriage.

We finally have a news cycle that exposes Obama and his socialist Democrats' biggest blunder, the absolute worst piece of legislation in the history of the nation -- Obamacare.  And the GOP's response is to divert national attention to an illegal immigration reform plan that most Americans adamantly oppose.  Is the Republican leadership insane?

The editors at National Review call the GOP immigration reform push "one of the most mystifyingly stupid misadventures in recent congressional history."  The GOP establishment (GOPe) doesn't need to be handing the media issues to flog us with.  The party needs to focus on winning elections, and that means flogging the Democrats with issues that matter -- jobs, Obamacare, and government spending -- day after day.  But Speaker Boehner is forcing the issue of immigration to the front burner, instead of issues Americans desperately care about.

"Day after the 2012 election, I said it's time for Congress and the president to deal with this very important issue," Boehner said at a morning news conference.  "I think it's time to deal with it."

John Boehner is bumbling around doing the bidding of the last powerful interest group who talked to him, the Chamber of Commerce.  Mitch McConnell is in hiding again, but he'll be in favor of whatever gains him the most politically.  Even the new young leadership of the Republican Party, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, are loudly hawking immigration reform.  And Juan McCain -- a GOPe former presidential candidate -- is champing at the burrito to lead the Gang of Eight back for another charge at amnesty.

It's Déjà vu All Over Again

It's not like we haven't been down this road before.  President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, and immediately afterwards the United States was inundated under a flood of illegal aliens, which forever changed the character and face of America.

What were the essential elements of the 1986 immigration reform act?  They were to:

1.     Prohibit the hiring of illegal immigrants

2.     Provide new resources for border enforcement along the Mexican border

3.     Offer amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants already in the country.

Sound familiar?  These are essentially the same "reforms" the GOPe and Democrats are now pushing.  We've been there and done that.  Americans have the t-shirt, the tattoo, and the scar.

Can we believe the current House proposal would survive reconciliation with a Senate version?  Never happen.  Boehner currently says he won't support amnesty.  Who can believe him?  Who trusts Harry Reid and the Senate?  And who trusts this president not to interpret congressional reform legislation any way he choses?

None of the 1986 reforms worked as intended -- unless you're a Democrat seeking new voters to advance socialism or an employer eager to exploit cheap labor.  Back in 1986, the Act contemplated three to five million illegal aliens.  Today we're talking about a staggering twelve million more.  Here's what former Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) had to say about the 1986 act he voted for,

"I thought then that taking care of three million people illegally in the country would solve the problem once and for all," Mr. Grassley said.  "I found out, however, if you reward illegality, you get more of it.  Today, as everybody has generally agreed, we have 12 million people here illegally."

For the vast majority of Americans, the 1986 amnesty was a complete and utter disaster, forever changing the economy, the character and the spirit of our nation.  The terrible damage it has done to workers, wages, our schools, hospitals, public welfare agencies, and society is almost unfathomable.  And now the Republicans want to help the Democrats do it again?

If You Reward Illegality You Get More of It

If Congress passes yet another "immigration reform" act, we could be rubbing elbows with forty-eight million illegal aliens in the United States by 2040.  Socialist economies in Latin America, as elsewhere, manufacture refugees.  Desperate people will flee to El Norte in vast numbers.  They will overwhelm us -- unless we end illegal immigration as we know it and impose strict border control.  We need to enforce the laws we already have, not create new ones.

Americans don't want immigration "reform" and we don't trust our government to do it properly anyway.  A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that just 39 percent of Americans thought immigration reform was a priority.  A whopping 91 percent said that job creation should be the government's number one priority.  In an article entitled, Americans Just Aren't That Into Immigration, the National Journal summarized the poll results this way,

When you look at the NBC News poll numbers, it's simple to make the political case for the Republicans who urge further reform procrastination.  The party genuinely does face big risks in pursuing this kind of partial reform.  A recent Pew Research poll found that 68 percent of Republicans believe that offering a path to legal status would reward illegal behavior, and 72 percent say it'd be a drain on government services. 

Republican Party Suicide Watch

Ronald Mortensen asks the question, "Will Boehner Lose the House by Shifting the Focus from Obamacare to Amnesty for Illegal Aliens?"  I believe we could lose the House, the Senate, and everything we hold dear.

Ann Coulter recently penned an article that likened the GOP's spastic lunge for immigration reform to electoral suicide,

As House Republicans prepare to sell out the country on immigration this week, Phyllis Schlafly has produced a stunning report on how immigration is changing the country.  The report is still embargoed, but someone slipped me a copy, and it's too important to wait.
Citing surveys from the Pew Research Center, the Pew Hispanic Center, Gallup, NBC News, Harris polling, the Annenberg Policy Center, Latino Decisions, the Center for Immigration Studies and the Hudson Institute, Schlafly's report overwhelmingly demonstrates that merely continuing our current immigration policies spells doom for the Republican Party.

Pat Buchanan has written several books that shed light on the destructive effects of our disastrous immigration policies.  He is a serious student of the issue and recently said that the GOP lost middle-America in part because of its immigration policies.

Almost all of those breaking our laws, crossing the border and overstaying their visas are young, poor or working class.  Between 80 and 90 percent are from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
They are Third World peoples.  They believe in government action and government programs that provide their families with free education, health care, housing, food and income subsidies.  

The Chamber of Commerce and the GOPe know full well their version of immigration reform means demographic suicide for the white majority and the Republican Party.  They know this. And yet they proceed with it.

The Final Last Straw

Is it time at long last for conservative voters to turn our backs on the Republican Party and form a new party?

If we rally around a new conservative party, centered around constitutional and traditional American values, we could be in the political wilderness for the decade or so it would take to become competitive.  That means America's de facto socialist party, the Democratic Party, will have free rein and complete control over all branches of government, the media, academia and -- increasingly -- over larger swaths of business and industry.  The socialists could complete the destruction of our constitutional republic in that time.  That's the risk we take if we say adios to the Republican Party.

Most Americans I know want a halt to all immigration, at least until we can gain control of what we have now.  We want the borders secure, immigration halted from terrorist countries, a complete halt to all U.N. refugee programs, and deportation of all illegal aliens.

I've been a holdout for years, believing we should try to reform the Republican Party because forming a new party was just too precarious a path to take.  But if the GOPe is going to betray the American people and undermine the future of this nation, then who needs them? We're no longer on the same side.

Amnesty is political suicide for the Republican Party and national suicide for the country.  Millions of conservatives view amnesty as the ultimate act of betrayal.  And if John Boehner, John McCain, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and their ilk, play into Obama's hands on immigration, we will turn our backs on the Republican Party forever.  It will be the final last straw.

Republicans to rescue Dems by Thomas Sowell

Republicans to rescue Dems, betray the nation

Thomas Sowell likens illegal aliens to embezzlers or burglars 'living in the shadows'

by Thomas Sowell

Some supporters of President Obama may be worried about how he and the Democrats are going to fare politically, as the problems of Obamacare continue to escalate and it looks like the Republicans have a chance to win a majority in the Senate.
But Democrats may not need to worry so much. Republicans may once again come to the rescue of the Democrats, by discrediting themselves and snatching defeat from the very jaws of victory.
The latest bright idea among Republicans inside the Beltway is a new version of amnesty that is virtually certain to lose votes among the Republican base and is unlikely to gain many votes among the Hispanics the Republican leadership is courting.
One of the enduring political mysteries is how the Republicans can be so successful in winning governorships and control of state legislatures, while failing to make much headway in Washington. Maybe there are just too many clever GOP consultants inside the Beltway.
When it comes to national elections, just what principles do the Republicans stand for? It is hard to think of any, other than their hoping to win elections by converting themselves into Democrats lite. But voters who want what the Democrats offer can vote for the real thing, rather than Johnny-come-lately imitations.
Listening to discussions of immigration laws and proposals to reform them is like listening to something out of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them. One of the big problems that those who are pushing “comprehensive immigration reform” want solved is how to help people who came here illegally and are now “living in the shadows” as a result.
Is liberty on life support for good? There is hope … read Manny Edwards’ book “The Truth About Liberty: How the Tea Party Can Save America”
What about embezzlers or burglars who are “living in the shadows” in fear that someone will discover their crimes? Why not “reform” the laws against embezzlement or burglary, so that such people can also come out of the shadows?
Almost everyone seems to think that we need to solve the problem of the children of illegal immigrants, because these children are here “through no fault of their own.” Do people who say that have any idea how many millions of children are living in dire poverty in India, Africa or other places “through no fault of their own,” and would be better off living in the United States?
Do all children have some inherent right to live in America if they have done nothing wrong? If not, then why should the children of illegal immigrants have such a right?
More fundamentally, why do the American people not have a right to the protection that immigration laws provide people in other countries around the world – including Mexico, where illegal immigrants from other countries get no such special treatment as Mexico and its American supporters are demanding for illegal immigrants in the United States?
The very phrase “comprehensive” immigration reform is part of the bad faith that has surrounded immigration issues for decades. What “comprehensive” reform means is that border control and amnesty should be voted on together in Congress.
Why? Because that would be politically convenient for members of Congress, who like to be on both sides of issues, so as to minimize the backlash from the voting public. But what “comprehensive” immigration reform has always meant in practice is amnesty up front and a promise to control the border later – promises that have never been kept.
The new Republican proposal is to have some border-control criteria whose fulfillment will automatically serve as a “trigger” to let the legalizing of illegal immigrants proceed. But why set up some automatic triggering device to signal that the borders are secure, when the Obama administration is virtually guaranteed to game the system, so that amnesty can proceed?
What in the world is wrong with Congress taking up border security first, as a separate issue, and later taking responsibility in a congressional vote on whether the border has become secure? Congress at least should come out of the shadows.
The Republican plan for granting legalization up front, while withholding citizenship, is too clever by half. It is like saying that you can slide halfway down a slippery slope.
Republicans may yet rescue the Democrats, while demoralizing their own supporters and utterly failing the country.

Immigrants ARE Liberals

The Liberal Newcomers

 
Limit immigration or watch conservative efforts become irrelevant.
 

By Phyllis Schlafly 

 

People come to America because it is a remarkable oasis of freedom, prosperity, and opportunity. Conservatives recognize that the principal reason for our unique abundance is our constitutional restraint on the power of government. As Thomas Jefferson said, “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
Maintaining this system requires the public to support limited government. In a new report, Eagle Forum details how immigration is fundamentally changing the electorate to one that is much more supportive of big government.
By itself, the annual flow of 1.1 million legal immigrants under the current system will create more than 5 million new potential voters by 2024 and more than 8 million by 2028. Congressional Budget Office projections indicate that under the Senate Gang of Eight’s S.744 bill, the total additional potential voters would rise to nearly 10 million by 2024 and 18 million by 2028. The influx of these new voters would reduce or eliminate Republicans’ ability to offer an alternative to big government, to increased government spending, to higher taxes, and to favorite liberal policies such as Obamacare and gun control.
There is nothing controversial about the report’s conclusion that both Hispanics and Asians, who account for about three-fourth of today’s immigrants, generally agree with the Democrats’ big-government agenda. It is for this reason that they vote two-to-one for Democrats.
The 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey found that 62 percent of immigrants prefer a single, government-run health-care system. The 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study found that 69 percent of immigrants support Obamacare. Pew also found that 53 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, the highest of any group surveyed. This is even higher than the 47 percent among self-identified supporters of Occupy Wall Street.
The Pew Research Center has also found that 75 percent of Hispanics prefer a “bigger government providing more services,” and only 19 percent prefer a smaller government. Pew also reported that 55 percent of Asians prefer “bigger government providing more services,” and only 36 percent prefer a smaller government. So it’s no surprise that in 2012, 71 percent of Hispanics and 73 percent of Asians voted for Obama.
Even Republican emphasis on patriotism and national sovereignty is likely to alienate many immigrants. A Harris poll found that 81 percent of native-born Americans believe our schools should teach students to be proud of being American, compared with only 50 percent of immigrants who had become naturalized U.S. citizens. Only 37 percent of naturalized citizens (compared with 67 percent of native-born citizens) think our Constitution is a higher legal authority than international law.
While it seems that much of the Republican-party leadership has not actually looked at the policy preferences of immigrants, everyone else who has looked at the polls comes to the conclusion that significant majorities of immigrants and their children are big-government liberals. The New York Times’ Washington bureau chief admitted last year that “the two fastest-growing ethnic groups — Latinos and Asian-Americans — are decidedly liberal.” As University of Alabama political scientist George Hawley observes, “Immigrants are well to the left of the American public on a number of key issues.” He also makes clear that “liberalizing immigration will liberalize the U.S.” Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute points out that it “is not immigration policy that creates the strong bond between Hispanics and the Democratic party, but the core Democratic principles of a more generous safety net, strong government intervention in the economy, and progressive taxation.”
Immigration in general — not race — is the issue. The limited data for other immigrants — including Europeans and Muslims — indicate that they, too, generally hold views well to the left of the average American voter. In fact, as discussed in our new report, for reasons largely outside the control of conservatives, immigrants and their children gravitate to left-wing parties in almost all Western countries. The problem for conservatives is not race or ethnicity but immigration as such.
Another important conclusion of our report is that there is no evidence that amnesty or inviting more immigration will produce Republican votes and abundant evidence that it will produce more Democratic votes. After Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 amnesty, George H. W. Bush received only 30 percent of the Latino vote in 1988, seven percentage points less than Reagan in 1984.
Those supporting a big increase in legal immigration point to the successful assimilation of Great Wave immigrants (roughly 1880 to 1920). But that wave was followed by a slowdown of immigration from the 1920s to the 1960s, which allowed newcomers to assimilate, learn our language, and adapt to our unique system of government. Also, Great Wave immigrants arrived before the rise of the grievance industry and identity politics. Moreover, it still took decades before a significant share of these immigrants moved into the Republican column. In the meantime, Great Wave immigrants and their children provided much of the political support necessary to pass and sustain both the New Deal and the Great Society.
It is also the case that the Republican party’s continued support of mass immigration, let alone the increases in the Gang of Eight bill, is contributing to alienating the Republican base, at least 4 million of whom stayed home in 2012.
The generally liberal views of today’s immigrants do not mean they are bad people. Most immigrants are hard working and love their families, and many are religious. Many hard-working Americans not of recent-immigrant origin who are devoted to their families also want to expand government. Nevertheless, platitudes about immigrants’ being hard working does not make them conservatives when it comes to the size and scope of government.
While Republicans should do a better job of outreach, immigrants’ generally liberal views should not be trivialized as something that can be overcome by the right 30-second TV or radio ad or by running candidates with Asian or Hispanic backgrounds. These may help, but the political values and preferences of the immigrant community are sincerely felt and not easily changed.
Conservatives should appeal to immigrants without sacrificing our principles. One way to do this is to argue that defeating the Gang of Eight bill, with its amnesty and doubling of legal immigration, would benefit the nearly 60 million American citizens (many of them immigrants) who are not working. If employers really are having trouble finding workers, the private-enterprise solution should be to raise the pay! A tight labor market is the best anti-poverty program. A reduction in immigration would also take pressure off our already overloaded health-care system and schools, and it would facilitate the assimilation of immigrants already here.
Our new report makes clear that for conservatives, there is no issue more important than reducing the number of immigrants allowed into the country each year. If legal immigration is not reduced, it will be nearly impossible for conservatives to be successful on the issues we care about.
If the Republican party is to remain a party that is conservative and nationally competitive, it must defeat amnesty and any proposed increases in legal immigration. Further, we must work to significantly reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country from the current level of 1.1 million a year. There is nothing inevitable about immigration. The level and selection criteria can be changed by Congress.
Looking at the political motivation of the groups pushing higher immigration and amnesty, it’s obvious that the Democrats promote large-scale immigration because it produces more Democratic votes. If the Republican party is to remain conservative and nationally competitive, it must defeat amnesty and proposed increases in legal immigration.
— Phyllis Schlafly is the president of Eagle Forum.

Progressivism Kills

Detroit is not healthy for children and other living things.

By Kevin D. Williamson

There are many horrific stories to be told about the implosion of Detroit, once the nation’s most prosperous city, today its poorest. There is the story of its corrupt public institutions, its feckless leaders, its poisonous racial politics, its practically nonexistent economy, the riots that have led to its thrice being occupied by federal troops. The most horrific story may be that of the death of its children.

Detroit has the highest child-mortality rate of any American city, exceeding that of many parts of what we used to call the Third World. The rate of death before the age of 18 in Detroit is nearly three times New York City’s, and its infant-mortality rate exceeds that of Botswana. The main cause of premature death among the children of Detroit is premature birth — the second is murder. While the city’s murder rate among adults is nothing to be proud of, more horrifying is the fact that between 30 and 40 children are murdered in Detroit in a typical year. Some of those children are nine-month-olds killed by rifle fire in their beds; some are budding criminals in their late teens — and each of those situations offers its own unique horrors. So dangerous is the city that children are being armed by their parents, which has predictable consequences. “I work in the Wayne County Juvenile Court, and these children are obtaining guns from adults,” children’s-law attorney Lynda White told the Detroit News, which has been conducting an in-depth investigation of how Detroit’s children are dying. “They’re obtaining guns illegally from people who are supposed to be responsible and people who are supposed to protect them. And if that person who has a huge influence in your life is giving you a gun, some of them tend to think it’s okay to carry it. And they’re being told, ‘You need this for your protection, you live in Detroit.’”

Detroit represents nothing less than progressivism in its final stage of decadence: Worried that unionized public-sector workers are looting your city? Detroit is already bankrupt, unable to provide basic services expected of it — half the streetlights don’t work, transit has been reduced, neighborhoods go unpatrolled. Worried that public-sector unions are ruining your schools? Detroit’s were ruined a generation or more ago, the results of which are everywhere to be seen in the city. Worried that Obamacare is going to ruin our health-care markets? General-practice physicians are hard to find in Detroit, and those willing to accept Medicaid — which covers a great swath of Detroit’s population — are rarer still. Worried about the permissive culture? Four out of five of Detroit’s children are born out of wedlock. Worried that government is making it difficult for businesses to thrive? Many people in Detroit have to travel miles to find a grocery store. This is the endgame of welfare economics: What good is Medicaid if there are no doctors? What good are food stamps where there is no food? What good are “free” schools if you’re so afraid to send your children there that you feel it prudent to arm them first?

Detroit is what Democrats do. The last Republican elected mayor of Detroit took office during the Eisenhower administration. The decay of Detroit is not the inevitable outcome of the decline of the automotive industry: The automotive industry is thriving in the United States — but not in Detroit. It isn’t white flight: The black middle class has left Detroit as fast as it can. The model of Detroit politics is startlingly familiar in its fundamentals, distinguished only by its degree of advancement: Advance the interests of public-sector unions and politically connected business cronies, expand the relative size of the public sector remorselessly — and when opposed, cry “Racism!” When people vote with their feet, cry “Racism!” When the budget just won’t balance, cry “Racism!” Never mind that the current mayor of Detroit is the first non–African American to hold that job since the 1970s, or that, as one Detroit News columnist put it, “black nationalism . . . is now the dominant ideology of the [city] council” — somewhere, there must be a somebody else to blame, preferably: aged, portly, white, male, and Republican. No less a fool than Ed Schultz blamed the straits of this exemplar of Democratic single-party rule on “a lot of Republican policies.” Melissa Harris-Perry, “America’s leading public intellectual,” blames Detroit’s problems on its conservatism and small government, oblivious to the fact that Detroit maintains twice as many city employees per resident as do larger cities such as Fort Worth and Indianapolis, and three times as many as liberal San Jose.

The result of all that municipal “investment”? For children newborn through age 18, Detroit sees 120 deaths per 100,000 each year — a rate 26 percent higher than second-place child-killer Philadelphia. That’s nearly two and a half times the rate in Los Angeles, which isn’t exactly a leafy suburban paradise. Every time our progressive friends come to us with another idea for transferring wealth from the productive economy to them and their friends, they scold us: “Think of the children!” But those who resist their efforts to do to the country at large what they have done to Detroit are thinking of the children.

There used to be a popular bumper sticker reading, “War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things.” War is hell, Detroit merely hellish. The difference is, we don’t send children off to war.

Article V Convention: Path of Least Resistance

By Robert Berry
In what is taking shape as a sort of Great Awakening, state legislators have begun to learn that they hold equal status with Congress when it comes to proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  Indeed, a handful of state legislators from each state, as yet unknown, are destined for the annals of American history the moment the nation's first Convention for Proposing Amendments is gaveled to order.

The process, found in Article V of the U.S. Constitution, requires the legislatures of at least two thirds (34) of the states to pass resolutions demanding that Congress call a "Convention for Proposing Amendments" -- an ad hoc assembly where state legislators, voting state-by-state, may propose (but not ratify) amendments. 

The thought of such a thing, while horrifying to Congress, represents the last constitutional method to reform a federal government run amok.  And nothing more clearly illustrates the divide between flyover country and the federal city than the remedies that are sure to be proposed and later ratified by the states.  To the ruling class, nothing could be more anathema than the prospect of amendments requiring term limits, balanced budgets, single-subject bills, and commerce clause reform.

Few on the Hill seem to be taking notice of the gathering clouds -- a situation that the states would do well to exploit.  If anything, the nascent "Article V movement" is little more than a curiosity among the ruling elite.  Congress, aware of Article V, has every expectation that the states will continue a 200-year losing streak when it comes to coordinating the resolutions necessary to trigger the process.  This is entirely due to the fact that the founders left Congress in charge of counting the resolutions.

Really bad idea, that.

The issue comes down to the "aggregation" of the resolutions.  To whatever extent each state's resolution differs from other states, Congress can play games with the counting.  The only way around the problem is for the states to coordinate their efforts and agree on resolution language that could be introduced verbatim into dozens of legislatures simultaneously -- a "shock and awe" maneuver if ever there was one.

While coordinating resolutions may seem like a trifle, its a step that will have to be taken if ever an amendments convention is to be held.  A serious complicating factor is the issue of deciding if the "scope," or subject, of the assembly should be limited to the discussion of specific amendments (e.g., balanced budget, term limits, etc.).

In the founding era, a subject was customarily stated as a matter of protocol to provide focus for the gatherings.  Colonies, and later states, were then able to send "commissioners" to the conventions who possessed specialized knowledge or expertise in the area to be discussed. 

But today the idea of restricting the scope of an amendments convention is in play for a very different reason: to placate fear-mongers who gratuitously assert that the assembly would be the constitutional equivalent of a nuclear bomb.  Though completely discredited, this remnant of opponents from the Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) dustup of the 1980s sees only sinister plots.  To this day, the opponents continue to feign ignorance of the distinction between an Article V Convention for Proposing Amendments -- which, needless to say, proposes amendments -- and a full authority Constitutional Convention.

As legislators become educated about the process, fears of nightmare scenarios melt away, but the terror of the boisterous band remains.  Put another way, legislators don't really buy the "arguments from Armageddon," but they do fear the zealots who make them.  So the idea of restricting the amendments convention to a narrow scope is being offered to provide political cover for legislators who want to give the appearance that they are taking "the concerns" seriously.

It hasn't worked.

Having gotten exactly zero mileage from the accommodation, some pro-Article V state legislators are doubling down.  Browbeaten into thinking that the only path to reform goes through the conspiracy theorists, "Delegate Limitation Acts (DLAs)" are being offered as a way to severely punish fiendish delegates to the amendments convention who might propose...a New World Order Constitution?  Apparently it is lost on these lawmakers that DLAs only fuel the  conspiracy scenarios. 

With such defensive tactics and timidity, it becomes plain to see why the Article V movement has been so spectacularly unsuccessful, and for so long.

Not only are such accommodations are entirely unnecessary, but they would have the effect of hamstringing the amendments convention and every delegate in attendance to the point that little could be accomplished.  Even worse, anything that manages to get accomplished would be subject to an endless barrage of lawsuits using the limiting measures as a pretext to rule any and every amendment proposal ultra vires, or beyond the power of the convention's call -- even those that are clearly within the convention's call!  Anything and everything that can send the matter into the courts with be used to that end.

And the federal court system will be the graveyard for state-initiated amendment reform.

Rather than protecting the amendments convention, limiting measures will be used as a set of levers by Congress, the courts, and all other opponents as a means to pry it apart.  Thus, state legislators who have deluded themselves into thinking that support for limiting measures is the responsible and conservative course are in fact being reckless.  Far from quelling opposition, the defensive tactics have managed only to fan flames and legitimize the nonsensical.

Instead of splitting hairs with crackpots, state legislators had better consider the seasoned opponent occupying the strategic ground on Capitol Hill.

Less is More

The way forward is for the states, in their resolution language, to simply quote the part of Article V, which compels Congress to call the amendments convention:

The Congress ... on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments[.]

A minimalist resolution basically quoting Article V provides no purchase for legal challenge and is effectively saying to Congress, "The Constitution says we can demand it...so we're demanding it.  Period."  The bonus of taking this path of least resistance is that there are already 18 states with valid resolutions of this type -- and those resolutions never expire!

The resulting unfettered Convention for Proposing Amendments will be a place where delegates can deliberate state-centric solutions to that which vexes the nation.  Delegates, more properly known as "commissioners," each attend with a written "commission" from his or her home legislature.  By signing this document, commissioners agree to act under the "law of agency," carrying out their home state's bidding, and crucially, acknowledging that they can be pulled from the assembly in disgrace should bad conduct warrant. 

If state legislators can steel their courage, taking the full fury of the imbalanced opposition, an Article V Convention for Proposing Amendments becomes an inevitability. 

Only then will these lawmakers be worthy of their place in history.