Oligarchs for Austerity and the CNP Have a Big New Scheme: Suing their Way to a New Constitution

Did you hear? Pres­i­dent Trump is going to be run­ning for a third term in office. And he’s not jok­ing. Who knows how seri­ous he is, but as we’re going to see, the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of third pres­i­den­tial term may not be as set in stone as many sus­pect. Along with the rest of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. A con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion could be just around the cor­ner. Just a law­suit away. And we can thank the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and their fel­low trav­el­ers at the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Com­mit­tee (ALEC) for this loom­ing threat. The same aus­ter­i­ty lob­by that has spent years try­ing to roll back Oba­macare, evis­cer­ate Medicare and Med­ic­aid through block-grants, and gen­er­al­ly erode what’s left of the US’s social safe­ty-nets as more and more Amer­i­cans are forced to take any work avail­able just to qual­i­fy for increas­ing­ly mea­ger gov­ern­ment assis­tance. That aus­ter­i­ty lob­by. It’s back with a big sneaky plan: a law­suit pur­port­ing to prove that the 34 state thresh­old for an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion has already been met. David M. Walk­er — the for­mer US Comp­trol­ler for both Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush — is lead­ing the legal effort, with legal sup­port from NRA lawyer (and CNP mem­ber) Charles “Chuck” Coop­er. If the law­suit suc­ceeds, get ready for a new con­sti­tu­tion writ­ten by and for the oli­garchy.

But this sto­ry isn’t just about this new law­suit. It’s also about how the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by has been work­ing with CNP to push these con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion ambi­tions since at least 2013, which is right around the same time it become clear that the last major round of DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing had failed in achiev­ing a “grand bar­gain” of slashed enti­tle­ments. A round of lob­by­ing that began in earnest as the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was still play­ing out with David Walk­er — then Pres­i­dent and CEO of the new­ly formed aus­ter­i­ty-cen­tric Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion — tak­ing on a lead role as pub­lic aus­ter­i­ty advo­cate. The Great Reces­sion was a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for a “grand bar­gain”. And it almost worked. But did­n’t work, at least not entire­ly, and it was­n’t long after that fail­ure became clear that we saw the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and the CNP begin hatch­ing far more ambi­tious plans. Plans that just might be about come to fruition. Because as we’re also going to see, if a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion does hap­pen, the forces behind this plan are the ones who will be run­ning it. The DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by real­ly is just a law­suit away from win­ning every­thing.

The Eyes Over Mike Johnson: the CNP’s Texas Template for God’s Power Grope

Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism isn’t sim­ply on the rise in the Unit­ed States. It’s already at the top, thanks in no small part to the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the myr­i­ad of groups oper­at­ing under its theo­crat­ic umbrel­la. The Supreme Court is dom­i­nat­ed by a hard right major­i­ty and there’s even the CNP’s planned mass purges — start­ing with the gov­ern­ment but not end­ing there — under the ‘Sched­ule F’/Project 2025 label. That’s all part of the grim con­text sur­round­ing a series of reports around the new Speak­er of the House, Mike John­son that should raise seri­ous ques­tions about just how much influ­ence the lead­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist hold over new Speak­er of the House. But thanks the House and Supreme Court aren’t the only gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion under Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism sway. States Repub­li­cans are increas­ing­ly adopt­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist laws, with Texas lead­ing the way under the way under the vision of CNP pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. It turns out John­son and Bar­ton are long-time allies who share the same vision for the future. A vision in line with the ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ form of author­i­tar­i­an Chris­tian­i­ty now main­streamed in the CNP-dom­i­nat­ed net­work of 47,000 church­es in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC). Which also hap­pens to be a denom­i­na­tion grap­pling with a sex abuse mega-scan­dal haunt­ing­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the Catholic Church’s mega-abuse scan­dal. A mega-scan­dal with a num­ber of major CNP fig­ures oper­at­ing as abusers or enablers. It’s that broad­er inter­sec­tion of Mike John­son’s ties to Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism with this grow­ing SBC abuse mega-scan­dal that we’re going to look at in this post.

Oligarchs for Theocracy: Project Blitz, the Council for National Policy, and God’s Insurrection

“One nation under God.” It’s a famil­iar phrase for mod­ern Amer­i­cans. But how about the phrase “One nation under God, and one reli­gion under God”? That was the call recent­ly made by Michael Fly­nn. As we’re going to see, Fly­nn was­n’t just speak­ing for fel­low theocrats when he called for an end to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. He was voic­ing the views of some of the most pow­er­ful lob­bies oper­at­ing in DC. Groups like the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) that rep­re­sent the merg­er of cor­po­rate (Koch) and theo­crat­ic inter­ests. A net­work that for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es is the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s oli­garch estab­lish­ment, push­ing a theo­crat­ic agen­da with a goal of not just con­fer­ring spe­cial rights for Chris­tians but effec­tive­ly end­ing democ­ra­cy itself. Because as we’re also going to see, just as you can’t sep­a­rate the GOP estab­lish­ment from the theo­crat­ic CNP, you can’t sep­a­rate the GOP’s par­ty-wide push to over­turn the 2020 elec­tion results from the CNP either. The death of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy in the US is very much a ‘God’-ordained project.