Republicans would need control of at least 34 state legislatures to be able to call such a convention, and 37 to ratify any amendments.

So far they have unified control of 31 state legislatures. Of those 31, 19 have signed onto an application for an Article V Convention put forward by Convention of States, a conservative activist group.

https://www.businessinsider.com/constitutional-convention-conservative-scholar-states-2022-8

https://www.businessinsider.com/constitutional-convention-conservatives-republicans-constitution-supreme-court-2022-7

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    They could do so much worse than that. They could re-institute slavery (aside from the 13th amendment). They could make Evangelicalism the only legal religion. They could strip citizenship and human rights from queer people. They could ban the Democrats as a party and make the GOP the only legal party. Pick the worst Nazi shit you can imagine.

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      This is correct. They could literally do anything. But realistically, the chuds who are all about re-writing the constitution are all about limiting the federal government to basically just a military. So environmental regulation, Social Security, etc, would all be gone. Universal healthcare would be impossible. They essentially want 50 different nations with a mutual defense pact (or really, 50 states united by global imperialism).

      • join_the_iww [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        They essentially want 50 different nations with a mutual defense pact

        Something that I think about once in a while is that conservatives love capitalism and they praise the benefits of industrialization, but they also love localism, resent "multiculturalism" and put a lot of emphasis on the distinctions between the 50 states. And they don't seem to realize that capital accumulation (and the related development of more and more complicated global supply chains & information/media systems) is exactly what has diminished the importance of local cultural differences.

        They get angry when liberals & leftists say things like "the states aren't really that essentially different from each other when it comes to how you experience life", or "state distinctions don't matter anymore" or "all suburbs are kinda the same", but I think that conservatives know deep down that the liberals & leftists are kinda right about this.

      • soft [she/her]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I'm not sure that the mapping between local bourgeois and the Republican party is exactly that neat. There are plenty of bankers and corpos who are in deep with the Republicans and wouldn't stand to gain from signing on to the Alex Jones platform.

        That's what I hope anyway. I've been thinking lately that the neolibs who have been at the helms of both parties for 50 years are actually sort of progressive, in a way. No matter how painful the culture war gets, at least the capitalists can't help but gradually hollow out their own strength by financializing everything and consolidating and outsourcing and optimizing. Everything gets bigger and the TRPF stirs in its sleep. But if we have some great reset with local bourgeois temporarily making gains in their intra-bourgeois power struggles, breaking up corporations and reducing the torrential flows of government money into the "wrong" bourgeois pockets, then that could tend to turn back the clock in a world-historical sense. We could be farther from economic collapse than ever, while still losing the culture war. Not fun to think about.

        I'm not sure I'm really on the right track with this train of thought but that's what's been going on in this little brain :blob-no-thoughts:

    • Commander_Data [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The country would cease to exist, there's no way thr west coast or the northeast would remain under those terms.

        • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          2 years ago

          I don’t expect democrats in power to do anything, but if they did all of that and the California Dems didn’t do something I think they might actually get a sudden revolution. Which may be a disaster but I just don’t think the people of cities of California would tolerate that, and I have a very low expectation of Americans c

          • grey_wolf_whenever [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Its really hard to say, because I think functionally 99% of americans have no understanding of how this stuff works, how to organize with a union, how a general strike works, etc. I think what you'd see is just a series of disconnected left wing gatherings that get shot by police or newly empowered militias.

            I suspect a constitutional convention would ban 'communism' in order to justify executing dissidents.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        If the GOP gets to re-write the constitution then Balkanization would be one of the better possible outcomes.

    • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Time to revive the old Norwegian black metal tradition and burning some fucking churches

      • Mindfury [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        i've said it before; norwegian black metal bands may have a lot of shit beliefs, but they have one very good one and it involves churches