Now that Texas governor Greg Abbott has been in office for a while, it’s easy to see why he beat Wendy Davis so handily. Abbott is pushing back against what he, and many others, see as an overreaching federal government.
The Dallas Morning News reports:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott calls for Convention of States to take back states’ rightsGov. Greg Abbott, aiming to spark a national conversation about states’ rights, said Friday that he wants Texas to lead the call for a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution and wrest power from a federal government “run amok.”“If we are going to fight for, protect and hand on to the next generation, the freedom that [President] Reagan spoke of … then we have to take the lead to restore the rule of law in America,” Abbott said during a speech at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Policy Orientation that drew raucous applause from the conservative audience. He said he will ask lawmakers to pass a bill authorizing Texas to join other states calling for a Convention of States…Abbott, in his plan, dismisses many of those criticisms, saying that he would call for a limited scope to the convention.The plan lays out nine specific proposed amendments that would:
- Prohibit congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one state.
- Require Congress to balance its budget.
- Prohibit administrative agencies from creating federal law.
- Prohibit administrative agencies from pre-empting state law.
- Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a U.S. Supreme Court decision.
- Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for U.S. Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law
- Restore the balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution.
- Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds.
- Allow a two-thirds majority of the states to override a federal law or regulation.
A convention, Abbott wrote, would force the federal government to “take the Constitution seriously again.”
Ace of Spades made a great point about this:
It is time to take power back away from them and return it to the hands of those the Constitution says will wield ultimate political power: Us. The actual citizens. The American people generally, and not some weird inbred, intermarrying Government Caste.The more power this caste as robbed from the people, the more the people themselves have been sapped of energy, initiative, and, frankly, virtue.A free people is an energetic, vital, virtuous people.Unfree people are bent, warped things who begin thinking not in terms of natural productivity and industry but merely of gaming advantages and payoffs from their masters.
Just to show how serious Abbott is about this, here’s how he responded last week when Obama started talking about gun control through executive action:
On New Year’s Day Texas Governor Greg Abbott responded to Obama’s executive action on gun control by tweeting about it. The governor had no qualms about telling Obama to “Come and take it,” implying that Abbott won’t take the executive action without a fight.
Here’s the tweet:
This guy gets it.
Featured image via YouTube.
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