The States Fight Back: Progress on the Convention of States

Ladies and gentlemen, the states fight back, progress on the Convention of States. Please welcome the President of Convention of States Action, Mark Meckler. Good evening, CPAC! I'm super excited to be here at CPAC, and the thing that I'm most excited about, lots of great people on stage, lots of American heroes, but the truth is, from my perspective, as somebody who travels around the country, I spend almost all my time on the road, the real American heroes are out in the audience, so a big hand for you guys! Look, the grassroots are what drive politics. Whether we're talking about your local city, whether we're talking about a school board election, a city council election, a state legislative election, for me, it's all about the grassroots. I got involved in politics about 12 years ago. I was one of the co-founders of the Tea Party movement, and in 2010, we saw something miraculous. The largest swing in Congress since 1938. Republicans swept into office. I knew for sure that everything was going to change. And then nothing changed. It was an extraordinary moment in American history, and it was like a gut punch. I had put my personal life into it. Millions of folks in the Tea Party had put their life into it. We had swept Congress, and then nothing changed. And it was profound to realize that we had done what I had been taught all through junior high school and high school and into college about American civics, which is if you vote for the people who say they're going to do the things that you believe in, that everything changes. That they do the things that you say that you believe in, that you elected them to do, but that's not true. And it's not true because we've broken our system of governance. We've broken the structure in Washington, D.C., and the only people who can fix it, and I do mean the only people, are you. The grassroots. And that's what the Convention of States movement is about. It's about going to Washington, D.C., and taking your power back. Do you want to take your power back from D.C.? They will never give it to you, by the way. It doesn't matter who's president. I don't mean we don't need the best president we can have. I think we've had that. And I'm not saying that we don't need to elect the best people we can elect because we have guys like Jim Jordan in Congress. We've had some great people, but I mean they won't give it back to you. And the Constitution gives you the opportunity to do something extraordinary. The Constitution gives you the power, acting through your state legislatures, to demand your power back. To gather 34 states to call a convention. To get all the states together to propose amendments specifically for one reason and one reason only, and that is to restrain federal tyranny. Do you guys want to restrain federal tyranny? Let me give you quickly a few ideas of things that we can do in convention. How many people think that people serve too long in Washington, D.C.? Term limits, anybody? How many people think that Washington, D.C. needs to be fiscally responsible, needs to balance its budget? Are you with me? Now here are some of my favorites. How many of you think that the administrative state is out of control? Yeah? How about we get rid of the Department of Education? How about we get rid of the EPA? How about we get rid of the alphabet soup of agencies and return that power to you, the people in the states? I think you can judge people in politics very well by their friends and their enemies. Would you agree with that? I think Donald Trump made the right enemies. Don't you think so? So if you look at Convention of States by our friends and our enemies, and I think you should do that. You can go to conventionofstates.com. What you'll see is something really extraordinary. About four years ago, on Good Friday, a press release came out. It came from Common Cause, which is George Soros' main policy organization, and he had aligned 250 organizations to sign this press release. Biggest press release ever signed by the left in the United States of America. Planned Parenthood, La Raza, MoveOn.org, Daily Cause. Hillary Clinton personally has spoken out against Convention of States. I'm very proud of that. On the other side, who's in favor of Convention of States? Every single nationally known conservative figure in the United States of America that's spoken about this subject. I'm talking Limbaugh, God rest his soul, Hannity, Levin, Beck, Shapiro, Dace, you name it, on down. They've all spoken in favor if they've spoken of Convention of States. So you're going to hear some stuff about Convention of States. One of the things you're going to hear, and this is really important, the only single objection I hear to the idea of calling a Convention of States and taking power away from the federal government is we might have a runaway convention. I want you to understand what that means really quickly. A Convention of States is a gathering of the states where people come together, one vote per state, and they have a discussion. And at the end of the meeting, if they've been successful, if 26 states agree, then they will do something very radical. They'll make some suggestions. Now I don't know about you guys. I hear people say, this is really scary, it's terrifying. Have you ever had somebody say to you, hey, we're going to have a meeting, a bunch of people are going to get together, and at the end of that meeting we're going to make suggestions, and you said, oh no, don't do that, it's way too scary. That's not scary at all. They're going to make those suggestions. The suggestions go out to the states as suggestions, and it takes 38 states to ratify an amendment to the Constitution. Now I hear people say, Mark, all the time, I hear this, it's 6.7%, by the way, of Republicans that are opposed to this. We just polled this nationally with the Trafalgar Group, and some of that fringe element will say to me, yeah, but Mark, you have no idea what's going to happen. We might lose our beloved Second Amendment. Now I'm a big Second Amendment guy. My mom was a cop, my son's a Marine. We like our guns in our house. Anybody in here like their guns? Yeah, we like our guns. Putting the Second Amendment at risk, that would be scary stuff, right? I want to run some numbers for you. It takes 38 states to ratify any amendment that comes out of convention. That means it takes only 13 states to stop anything that comes out of convention. I travel a lot, I told you that. I'm generally carrying when I can. 24 states today allow you to carry your firearm into the state capitol. 14 states, this might sound unbelievable to you, actually allow you to take a loaded AR and a sling, put it across your back, walk into the gallery in the legislature and watch the proceedings. I'm not saying that's a good idea, I'm just saying it's allowed. We can't find 13 states to stop something that would infringe on the Second Amendment. That's ridiculous, it's outrageous, and that's a myth propagated by the American left, stopping you, trying to stop you from calling a convention of states to restore the power to where it belongs. Where does it belong? It belongs with you. I want to close with this. It takes heroes, literally people willing to step into the firing line to make politics work in America. We're in a war right now. Would you guys agree we're in a war? So it takes average people willing to step up and be heroic. But I gotta say, specifically, to Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, you guys are heroes. You and your family have been willing to step into the firing line like almost nobody else. God bless CPAC, God bless the Schlapp family. Thank you guys for being here. Conventionofstates.com