From KERA News:
We’re just weeks away from picking a new president and congress. But for some, that’s nowhere near enough change. It’s not hard to find an audience in Texas receptive to the message that the federal government is in need of a drastic fix. One group has an ambitious plan to do just that.
When Mark Meckler addressed the crowd of about a hundred Texans who gathered in a north Fort Worth church last night, he said both liberals and conservatives see dysfunction when they look at the capital. Until the states get together to fix it, he said, Washington will remain broken.
“Some people say never Trump, some people say never Hillary. I say never mind because it’s really up to us the people. We were given this power,” he said.
Meckler is a conservative activist. He founded the Tea Party Patriots back in 2009. Now, he’s part of a national organization calling for a convention of states.
Article V of the U.S. Constitution offers two paths to make amendments. All 27 current amendments were done one way: through Congress, and then ratified by the states.
Meckler said it’s time to try the other path laid out by the founding fathers: When two-thirds of the states call for it, they can convene a convention of states to propose amendments to the constitution.
“The prediction was that that constitution would be destroyed by the federal government – that it would usurp powers – and that the methodology that the founders gave us, the tool they gave us to use, was Article V,” Meckler said.
The effort has broad appeal among many conservative. Most of the Republican presidential candidates expressed support for a convention of states.